H is for Hawk

at it's heart was a willed loss of control. You pour your heart, your skill, your very soul, in to a thing- into training a hawk,  learning the form in racing or the numbers in cards- then relinquish control over it. That is the hook. Once the dice rolls, the horse runs, the hawk leaves the fist, you open yourself to luck, and you can not control the outcome. Yet everything you have done until that moment persuades you  persuades you that you might be lucky. The hawk might catch her quarry, the cards might fall perfectly, the horse make it first past the post. That little space of irresolution is a strange place to be. You feel safe because you are entirely at the worlds mercy. It is a rush. You lose yourself in it. And so you run towards those little slots of fate, where the world turns. That is the lure; that is why we lose ourselves, when powerless from hurt or greif, in drugs or gambling or drink; in addictions that collar the broken soul and shake it like a dog. I had found my addiction on that day out with mable. It was as ruinous, in a way, as if I'd taken a needle and shot myself with heroin. I had taken flight to a place from which I didn't want to return.