Choosing

Here is a poem I recently found that I wrote during my year in Argentina:


you'd think it'd be cooked and
sent to the bakery already
but yet the chef doesn't
even know what ingredients
to use

so the butter melts
and the milk curdles but
he still hopes something can
be done not trusting in his
skills. He could do something easy
at least; like pop some marshmallows
and rice crispies in the microwave,
but even that is too scary
because what if even that
turns out wrong or
even worse he ends up
popping marshmallows and rice
crispies forever in that
cursed microwave

Other random items about choices:

the fig tree

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Ge, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar p. 77

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake." Elbert Hubbert

"God has in His word opened before us the great events of the future--all that it is essential for us to know--and He has given us a safe guide for our feet amid all its perils; but it is Satan's purpose to destroy men's confidence in God, to make them dissatisfied with their condition in life, and to lead them to seek a knowledge of what God has wisely veiled from them, and to despise what He has revealed in His Holy Word."--Patriarchs and Prophets
p. 686-687

"Those who decide to do nothing in any line that will displease God, will know, after presenting their case before Him, just what course to pursue. And they will receive not only wisdom, but strength. Power for obedience, for service, will be imparted to them, as Christ has promised." --Desire of Ages p.668