first, it is a beautiful, rainy day today. it is a pleasure to be able to sit here and enjoy the smells, the sounds and the colors.
i am turning into water. am i the watery part of fire? or the fiery part of water?
last night, i made a note as i was drifting off to tell you about serendipity.
Serendipity
Flashback to the dinner with my family for my grandmother. My cousin Ching Wen mentions that our grandmother told her that she got her high tolerance of alcohol from her. “Did you know Grandma could really party when she was young?”
“I didn’t know she drank, since she’s always tasting our beers with a spoon, but I know she was a beauty queen. Did you know she had some French opera singer after her?”
I nudge my mom and ask her and she said the guy was Taiwanese not French, but was a music student who later on became a well-known opera singer, moving to France. Our grandmother already had 4 kids and a husband in prison, but yet, this sensitive young man who was more than 10 years younger than her still pursued her fervently. She turned him down and lost touch over the decades, but they had recently gotten in touch with each other through a mutual friend. They planned to meet, but then he cancelled. It had been over 50 years since they knew each other; they were old now. To meet now would mean the destruction of a treasured dream.
“That’s sad,” Ching Wen said.
“That’s kind of life,” I said. I asked her if she’d read Love in the Time of Cholera. I told her it was a rich book with a slow start, but an incredible story with incredible writing.
She said, “That’s the book in the movie, Serendipity.”
I remember seeing it, in the theater in fact, and that it had John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. But I couldn’t remember anything about the story.
“They meet and she writes her phone number in a book, and tells him that she’s going to sell it to the first used books store she sees. If he finds the book, then it’s meant to be. The book was Love in the Time of Cholera. And he can’t find it, until years later, his fiance gives it to him as a wedding present the night before their wedding.”
How could I not remember any of this?!? I got passed Love in the Time of Cholera by Rie, who brought it over one day and told me to read it. She’s always been so great like that. I read the book in Amsterdam and it made me kind of resigned to the forces of life and nature, but it made me want to make the right choices in the present.
It also made me think about the movie Serendipity. I remember always wanting to watch it again, and in fact, this wasn’t the first time the film had been in my conscious mind the last few days. So the next night, I went out and rented it.
Basically, these two people meet while Christmas shopping for their significant others, but have an amazing connection over coffee. He asks for her number, “Just in case…” (Just in case of what?). They’re both in relationships. There’s nowhere to go with this. She asks him if he believes in fate. she asks him to write his phone number on a $5 bill, then goes and spends it right away on gum. Then she writes her number in the book. Her idea is that if it’s meant to be, these objects will find their way back. At the end of the night, she runs into a hotel elevator and tells him to pick a random floor. If they both pick the same floor, then what is happening is real. This is fate. So she gets in and hits 25, and he gets in and has a panic attack, then manages to choose…25. But the problem is, the elevator stops on a lower floor, and a fat guy and a kid inexplicably dressed as the devil comes in. The kid of course, presses all of the buttons. So the girl gets off on the 25th floor, and she’s looking around, not knowing what to expect. Meanwhile, he is in an elevator that stops on every floor. But everyone who gets on and hears the story of what he’s doing gets into it, running out on every floor to see if the girl is there. Finally, his elevator stops on the 25 floor, and he runs out just as the doors to the elevator she’s in close. She disappears.
They found each other again years later because they couldn’t forget. Maybe the only way for them to believe what they had was real was to lose each other then find each other again. It is the hard way, but perhaps it’s what makes certain things more valuable, more appreciated. I think it’s a beautiful story. I think ultimately, I believe in destiny, and within the fabric of reality there is a weaving of destinies that you can almost make out if you know how to recognize the signs. But still, I also don’t want to spend the best (and hottest) years of my life waiting. I want to give someone the best of me while it’s still here today.