"Settle"

Such is the mantra of my paralegal associates these days. "Settle! So we don't have to go to Detriot." "Settle! So we can move on with our lives." "Settle! So I can sleep." Whether it is a desperate cry at a time of paralegal crisis or a moment of blind optimism, it has become our Seinfield phrase. The actual result of its potential enactment would be purely financial, X would pay Y more money than a small nation's net worth. The ramification would be even less pronounce, it would mean the return of financial status quo: Big business practices would continue to monopolize, and innovations would continue to be usurped. It would simply be a ripple on the Street, unfelt with the bumpy ride.

Yet within the dynasty that is my team, the ripple would signal the end of an era. Battles would end, wounds would heal, and tears would vaporize in the ripples of laughter, drowned out by the flowing of champagne and whiskey. The haze that is the political power struggles, the administrative alliances, the inferority complex of irrecognition, the high school passive agressive manipulative backstabbing coupled with stress-related sexual partnerships and the I-am-not-a-shopaholic-but-it-makes-me-feel-better-about-working-my-soul-away would all, quite simply, settle. Yet like the sandstorms amongst the Sahara, its calm, temporary; its lingering, eternal.

But the settlement is distant. For now, outside the calm eye of its center, the winds bellow with ferocity and desperation, and we are blinded by the sands of restless time and are blooded by the cuts that those it blinds make. To deepen the imperfections time digs, and our flaws fly, and suffer, do us all.

Alas, to ground the gust, I long. Calm within calamity we both share, yet dare I rest within our tender eye? "I v. The Storm," I plea. And so begins the chant within, "Settle. Settle. Settle."

Feel like a Million and Half

To match my other calf.