In Which She Marvels at Circularity of Things

Things like the Universe. Sometimes it seems that, somewhere out there, there really is a plan.

My host mom turned in shortly after dinner to rest up before tomorrow morning's drive to Tuscany for the long weekend; Dad stayed up another hour to do some business stuff on the computer; R breathed deeply next to his yellow nightlight (covered in assorted stickers), likely dreaming about wild animals and the new Star Wars Lego spaceship he abandoned tonight's dinner to assemble; and F clutched a brand new iPod, slim and black and already containing hundreds of American hit songs. I, however, stayed up way past my bedtime to watch Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino from the corner of our big red sofa, with an arts'n'crafts project on my lap and mug of tea at my feet, while the rest of the household slept. I really liked the song playing in the background of one of the final and most emotional scenes, and thought the piano sounded oddly familiar. And the voice... sounded like... Jamie Cullum? Then I remembered my last night at the Midem conference in Cannes, one month ago, when I defied fatigue and high heel blisters to walk "downtown" and see one of my favorite artists play a measly five song set in a small standing-only venue. He introduced the penultimate song with an anecdote about Clint Eastwood, claiming that he'd never before performed the song live, this song requested by Mr Eastwood for his upcoming film. I had mentally waved off the introduction and assumed I'd never see the movie; and even if I did, I wouldn't remember to connect this song to that film.



Yet almost exactly one month later, I realised that this was that very song! The song that Jamie Cullum debuted to me and my dad and a roomful of strangers in some upstairs room on the French coast. Is there such thing as chance? Through my mind raced a bit of a book I'd finished earlier in the week, Jeannette Wall's memoir The Glass Castle: If every action in the universe that we thought was random actually conformed to a rational pattern, Dad said, that implied the existence of a divine creator. I have run into corroborating evidence for this pattern so many times now that I'm no longer surprised, only deeply pleased and slightly amused. Like how all those years of Catholic mass in parochial grade school made it possible for me to attend an all-Tagalog Sunday mass and follow the entire service; like how the Peggy Guggenhaim exhibit I stumbled into months ago came up in a conversation with someone I've never met before, rendering me more widely cultured than I would have appeared. Like how learning the etymology of the word assassin from a seemingly mundane Ital-Eng language exchange sparked a new conversation with a different person from which I learned about an ancient Persian population that came and went leaving almost no trace. Like how taking a wrong turn not only kept me from getting lost the second time, but made it possible to give someone else directions. Like buying those ill-fitting boots in November gave me something to bring to Ivrea tomorrow, with which to wade through the orange muck in one of the weirdest small town events I've ever heard about.

Nothing is ever, ever random. Keep your eyes open at all times - it is all useful.