The Red Die

I found it on the sidewalk in Walla Walla, Washington. We were in town for a class reunion, my partner, myself, and my best friend. The best friend and I had graduated from that small liberal arts college in the New England tradition ten years earlier, and headed to the far southeastern corner of the state to reclaim a bit of our rapidly receding youth.

It happened that I was in the throes of a significant depression. This, of course, is not so unusual for me, blessed as I am with a particular sort of chemical soup in my brain. This episode, however, proceeded as well from a sense of frustration over my career, or lack of one. My peers, it seemed, had gone on to graduate school, started interesting jobs, even won awards. They were successful. I was stalled in a library job with minimal growth potential, making barely enough to pay my student loans (most from a failed attempt a doctoral program several years earlier).

That evening, as we walked back to our hotel, I found the die lying on the sidewalk. An oversized red die with white pips, faded gold letters circling the single pip: "RENO NEVADA." On the adjoining face, nestled between two pips, more gold lettering: "HAROLDS CLUB." A small hole at the center of that single pip hints that the die may have once been connected to some other piece of souvenir. A cord, perhaps? Or maybe the previous owner, bored one day, poked at it with the end of an opened paper clip. Or perhaps it's simply a flaw resulting from manufacture, somewhere at a factory in China.

I wonder why I pick things up. Like the man in Sartre's Nausea, obsessed with paper. Perhaps it results from my parents' refusal to waste anything. Or some bit of superstition remaining from another life. Or simply my need to find meaning in absolutely everything. (This clearly explains my current career path.)

That night, I felt psychically isolated, brittle, on edge. I was locked inside my head, obsessing over every little thing, angry with myself for my failure to control my world, to ride my own progress narrative. And there was that die, signifying luck and chance and risk. Signifying the highs and lows of taking a leap of faith.

For a moment, I felt the flicker of a smile. I put the die in my pocket.

A year later, my partner and I spent a silly weekend honeymooning in Reno. A coincidence, really. A lovely, lucky coincidence.