Chartomancy

Divining motives is a curious business.  There are obvious, broad strokes of intent, like Van Gogh, and there are conversations that seem oblique in the moment, as if you were looking at le Grande Jatte from three or four inches away, but like a work of pointilism, the picture becomes clear from a distance, with time.  And then you have the unclear expanse of uncertainty....a dark place where you have to feel your way out, like some endless hallway in the night, skimming fingers along the wall for doors, looking for scraps of light, or familiar sounds to guide you where you want to be.  And these indefinite markers could be so subtle as not to be noticed, the way a book was held, something flickering behind the eyes, a text message that came from nowhere and the specific words in it, or all the myriad things you saw but didn't remember, passing into the oblivion of your unconscious mind.  And the things noticed, you dissect them to try and understand.  Was there anything to understand?  Reading into nothing and imposing reasons.  Lighting a fire of meaning in the darkness of mere being.  Writing yourself a story.  Though maybe intuition trumps logic and takes us through alleys and hidden doors otherwise unavailable or jammed, to take us where we need to be, or, more like wayward detectives, maybe we're drunk on curiosity or  hubris or whiskey (most likely all three), and find ourselves suddenly in one of those alleys, poorly lit, about to get beaten bloody and knocked out.  Still, you keep going on, in whatever instance, ready to deconstruct, to pick apart, to find the bones, how they fit together, the elusive reason.