Some people wake up with a purpose. I wake up with my signature cocktail of defeatist optimism and near-certainty that the star and moon fairy lights hung precariously on my wall have fallen again.
You would think that after five months of this tomfoolery, I would have learned my lesson and fixed them once and for all. But there is something so exquisitely silly and deliciously pattern-reinforcing about knowing something to be imperfect (and often irritating) and loving it anyway.
On a good day, the fairy lights perfectly intertwine with the delicate chains and threads that hold together the moons and stars, and they harmonise in a symphony of sparkles and shine. However, these good days are far and few in between.
Instead, it is customary for the stars to lose their will to live and flail, a one-eighty-degree oscillation of the chains that renders a predictable yet unnecessarily theatrical death. Meanwhile, the twinkling lights that embrace the chains become entangled into a contortion so tenacious that it is almost impossible to set them free.
Cats have nine lives, and my fairy lights have at least fifty-three, because they vacillate between the two states of flawless and floundering far too often, unyielding to the assortment of methods I have employed to keep them in line. From command strips and hooks of all sizes to several types of tape and rubber bands, I have kept my lights afloat, hoping with each new method and contraption that they will not fall again. I don’t blame them when they do, however, for how can I expect an inanimate object to be perfect at all times when I, as a living breathing human, find it so hard?
The lights may be dazzling and the moons and stars lustrous, but even the shiniest metals can tarnish. Glittery things raised to heights have as much of a right to flounder as tiny, low-hanging fruit. So maybe my pretty lights are allowed to swing between opposite poles of impeccable and disarrayed at their whim, even if it often causes me distress. Maybe it’s okay for them to sway unsteadily, if only to find their footing.
Now, obviously, it would be goofy of me to compare myself to a non-living object—I do have free will after all—but I am known to occasionally engage in silly-goosery. So, I have to admit, somewhat reluctantly, that it is so tempting to generalize the case of my fairy lights to myself. It is alluring to, perhaps, feel comfort in a sense of solidarity with my moons and stars, as they are perpetually on the verge of falling, yet still trying their best to twinkle with grace and splendor even as invisible forces (or the incompetence of my most recent command strips) threaten to destabilise them.
No matter how many times they fall, the lights do their job remarkably well when the circumstances are favorable, and I have to give them credit for that. And if I can forgive and admire the fortitude of what is probably just a product of flawed manufacturing, maybe I am allowed to do the same for myself, as a creation of nature and Life, when my own imperfections rise to the surface.
