Horsie, 18 april, 2004
Matt Of Ooze took us to the horse track today. i took $25 out of my limited budget expecting to toss it into the trash, if not pay for the occasional sound of galloping and screaming.
we took our time on the first seven races and read the opinions of the experts, flipped through the little magazine-newspapers, and hedged what we had.
inevitably and expectedly, we mostly lost, gaining only a few carrot-stick dollars here and there, our interest fueled by the fragile rigging of such justifications as, "I'm close to winning," "I think I've got the system figured out," "Well, I just won these dollars so I might as well put em back in the game," and "These margaritas are pretty damn good."
we were there, just spending the day in the dust of the horse and greed afternoon, laughing over stupid shit and sitting around in the hot los angeles sun.
this was how we happily and patiently lost our money.
i was completely out, but a friend offered to loan me two more dollars. i reluctantly agreed.
on the eighth race of the day we all picked the same numbers and, weirdly, we all won. i collected $50 for my trifecta.
bolstered onto the next race, in a whiplash of decision i placed another bet on the most-likely three winners. i decided that the odds were not odds, per say, but a numeric representation of opinion and, maybe, faith in outcome. so, it seemed logical at the time, in my rather inebriated state (i am still a bit inebriated, so perhaps that is why it still makes sense) that these statistics were not really representations of event, but a momentum of belief, and that if that many people believed something would happen, it increased the chances of it actually happening. like prayer, or like sheep, i followed the herd of belief.
i bet another $2 trifecta, tossed it into the wind, and watched the beautiful, strong horses glide around the track a ninth time.
i won $100, totalling a tidy $150 for a day of $25 investment.
life is beautiful.
