I watched the movie August Rush which was lent to me by a friend. I expected it to be a love story but it wasn't, it was about a boy who was discovering his genius in music. I loved the music in this movie and the best thing that it did for me was remind me to listen to the sounds around us, that music is very much an important part of our life and that being different is something to be proud of.
While riding the bus, a man boarded it and sat across me, he was wearing a shell necklace which he took out and placed in a small tranparent plastic with pink ribbons on it. Then he pulled out a toothbrush and toothpaste out of his pocket and started brushing his teeth. Right there in front of me, in the bus, with many people watching. It was so hard to keep my head turned to the window and not watch him in amazement. In the next stop, when the bus doors opened for passengers to get in, he went to the door, spit out the bubbly toothpaste from his mouth to the streets below and then went back to his seat, toothpaste and brush back in his pocket, as if nothing happened. That redefined the way I see buses now.
Sometimes, when you yearn for something so hard, the universe would contrive to to fulfill it. It speaks in ways different than we do, yet if you'd try hard enough, you'd notice and understand it. Its' language is through silent signs or soft whispers, in every day things, in the tiniest details, in unassuming circumstances and it would only mean something to the right person, with the right need at her right mind.
This is my theory, that somewhere out there, is a person exactly like me but of the opposite gender as what I am. I have a good male friend in the US whose exact female replica I met the other week. It was so uncanny to be hearing her talk using exactly the same voice and intonation as my friend. Her appearance is similar and her intelligence, wit and thinking matches him. She could have been him. I wondered if ever the two would meet would they recognize themselves in each other? Most likely not, as the hardest people for us to know is ourselves.
Shaun Tan, an artist/illustrator/author, of very similar thinking as I am. I am glad I found him under peculiar circumstances last week. I suspect the universe had something to do with it. We are so similar, he has a painting in his book with the same lines as what I have written beside a painting I had made months ago. I accidentally found that he had acknowledged Gustav Dore in his book "The Arrival", the same French artist I have featured in my past two blogs ago and whom I thought noone would notice as I got it from an old old tattered used travel book of London which I bought for $2 from the library sale. I would like to meet him someday.
I noticed that I am moving towards the fantastic and surreal these days. After watching the movie, seeing the man on the bus, meeting my friend's identical persona and finding/reading Shaun Tan's surreal works, I have learned that being fantastic, surreal and in some ways thinking in weirdly ways, can be the best thing one can ever be.
Below image and phrase by Shaun Tan from his book "Tales from outer suburbia"
'It floats gently above suburban rooftops... inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night.'
1 comment:
haha :) the things that come to mind when one has too much coffee. :)
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