Spin Me About

"I got no answers
for you, Inara.
I got no rudder."

Many of you know by now that I am a browncoat through and through. I've personally introduced half a dozen people to the crew of Serenity and I increase that number at every chance I get.

"Wind blows northerly,
I go north.
That's who I am."

With that knowledge in hand it probably won't come as a surprise to most of you that I saw Serenity (the movie, not the pilot) again last night.

My mind had tripped over this monologue of Mal's both of the previous times I had seen the movie, but it hadn't sought out the cause of the trouble till this morning.

Now, maybe that ain't
a man to lead,
but they have to follow.

I am a gypsy. Most of you know that too. I cut a deep path and I don't expect many to walk it with me, but a few have offered and a few have tried. Most of the ones that offer succeed, most of the ones that try fail.

Some others try and make me walk their paths instead. I don't take that as a kindness, even when it's meant as such.

So you wanna tear me down...
do it inside your own mind.

I don't go looking for fights, but I find them often enough to suit. I'm not one to latch onto others, I let circumstances and my own will set my course, not what other's think best for me.

And only once, years ago now, did I find a woman that challenged my course not by effort or intention but by her nature alone. The others might want things of me, and make requests of their own--some of them even claim they want me on my terms, but they're usually lying to us both.

I came to a realization a year or so back, that the woman who tames me (if such a creature lives and breathes) will reach out to me. But now I am coming to a new realization, that the extension of her self to me is but one facet of a much longer process.

But you fog things up.
You always have.
You spin me about.

The woman who tames me will need something more. Something integral. Sometime elementally powerful and buried so deep she doesn't control it, it just shines through her skin like a searchlight buried in her soul. That woman will be my greatest enemy for many days, because I've become accustomed to keeping my own course and council and being spun about is not something I will appreciate if it happens.

"I wish like hell
you was elsewhere."

Such a woman, if I find her, might well be my threat and my salvation.

Or perhaps she'll abandon that opportunity, and choose to become another conquest instead? Those roads diverge early on, and the traveler must stick to the course she chooses.