I don't know if I will ever be able to finish 
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, since all I seem to do is find "fortuitous" coincidences all around me and then blog about them!
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, since all I seem to do is find "fortuitous" coincidences all around me and then blog about them! But this is one for the books.
I was editing my Interests field in my Blogger Profile, and as it happened, most of them were written in my usual longwinded manner. So it became virtually impossible to let the one-touch search take its course. If one of your listed interests is, say, "music", all you have to do is click the word and you have a list of all the bloggers with the same interest. (Although, if you're looking, via Blogger, to fortuitously meet someone of the opposite sex with the same interests as you, you should REALLY be more specific!)
The only interest that would actually throw up some results was "Sign Language". I went through the list, only to find that there were LOTS of Virgo women (like me, hence the excitement, duh!) on that list! There was one Jo among them, and being called Jo myself by most of my friends, it struck me as coincidence enough to reach out through cyberspace to this woman in Bristol and just say Hi.
I happened to visit the link on she had given to her husband's blog, and no prizes for guessing what his profile picture was. [Well, it wasn't exactly Magritte's Son of Man]. It was his face, obscured by the iconic apple!
Kundera's characters are born of metaphor; he says one metaphor can give birth to love.
Well, considering how obsessed I am with this painting, I don't want to read this guy's blog in great detail, lest I find him irresistibly attractive :) !
I cannot remember where or when I saw this painting for the first time; by the time I saw The Thomas Crowne Affair, I was no stranger to it. It's not really a painting in my mind anymore, though. It is an image, somewhat fluid in that it works as a collection rather than one image (it can be only the apple, only the hat, only the tie, only the wall. Incidentally I was about to add "only the briefcase" but that is merely an addition I have made to my mental picture of the real picture). It has become in my mind a beacon of all those fortuities that hold my life together. It has dogged me for quite some time; or perhaps I have dogged it. It has been serendipitous for me in ways more than one, not the least being the somersault my stomach does every time I encounter it unexpectedy, like on an unknown Blogger's profile.
This painting is why I took one look at one particular edition of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and knew I HAD to have it (funnily enough, the other edition had on the cover a drawing similar enough to Picasso's Dog, 
a sketch that has been a symbol for the minimalist and impressionistic style of sketching that Appa and I like so much; similar enough perhaps to be seen as fortuitous in itself, as if the book called out to me. But it didn't with that cover. If anything, the title evoked more interest).
a sketch that has been a symbol for the minimalist and impressionistic style of sketching that Appa and I like so much; similar enough perhaps to be seen as fortuitous in itself, as if the book called out to me. But it didn't with that cover. If anything, the title evoked more interest).It has occured to me before, I must admit, but occurs to me now with only greater conviction, that love is often no more the result of some happy chance that some mild attraction made a great deal out of.
But to say "no more than this" is to demean love, and place no value in the pricelessness of chance, and the pristine beauty of happenstance, serendipity, if you will. To do that would be to turn the world into Zembla*, which I, for one, have no intention of doing.
// Now that I have finally put downscaled versions of all these pictures in the same place, they seem to look different from what I recalled of them; Kundera's Bowler hat doesn't really look like Magritte's hat; who knows, maybe even the coincidences aren't as real as they seem.
*Courtesy Wikipedia: William Boyd coined the term zemblanity to mean somewhat the opposite of serendipity: "making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design". It derives from Novaya Zemlya (or Nova Zembla), a cold, barren land with many features opposite to the lush Sri Lanka (Serendip). On this island Dutch 16th Century navigator Willem Barentsz and his crew were stranded while searching for a new route to the east.
2 comments:
Ullo :-)
Well, Jo from Bristol is coming over to visit Jo from Deli :-) I *love* blogging-e-quaintances - I've got loads of online friends that I would never have known about if I hadn't started blogging :-)
(Though I am a Gemini, rather than a Virgo, I'm afraid...)
I love sign language - I started for a number of coinciding reasons. I'd worked as a volunteer for the British Red Cross for a while as a teenager, and as part of that, we were taught Makaton, which is a basic signing system for people with learning difficulties (with a basis in British Sign Language, but it isn't BSL, as I learnt very early on - lots of politics surrounding it!).
Then some of my classmates when I was doing my A Levels (last series of courses and exams in English schooling - taken aged 17-18. The results of these then allow you (or not...) to get into university) took a short sign language course at the local college, and taught me some of what I'd learnt.
Then, a few years later, I met my cousin (well, second cousin once removed - the daughter of my mother's cousin) for the first time; she is deaf, and also has minor cerebal palsy (one of the worst affected areas is her tongue :-( ), which means that she uses sign language a lot. I was very frustrated that I couldn't communicate with her properly.
So - I signed up (pun not intended!) for a local college course, and really enjoyed it. Wanted to take it to the next level (Level 1 is designed to be basic - so that you could get by if you have to, but you aren't able to have conversations), and managed to get one of the last places on the level 2 course at the same college. Whilst doing level 2, I found a local charity which works for deaf children, who needed a secretary for their meetings, and volunteered. Some of the committee are deaf, and some are hearing, so I get to practice my BSL once a month!
Unfortunately, I didn't have the money to go on and do level 3, but I am happy with the signing that I can do, and the use that I put it to :-)
I am a musician, though only an amateur one. I play the oboe in a community orchestra (http://www.longwellgreenorchestra.net/), which I love - there is a large social element, and the music we make ranges from vey serious (Beethoven, Mozart etc) to lighthearted and modern (film scores, musicals etc).
I used to sing with a choir, but it clashed with my sign language course. It was also a church choir, and, as an atheist, I stopped enjoying singing lots of religious music!
I'm going to look forward to reading through your blog :-)
Best wishes
Jo
Oh would you look at that. My friend S was out of town, and I was just thinking of forcing her to read this book, so I can talk to someone about it, since the only other person I know who was reading it hasn't finished and doesn't plan to soon..and of course as luck would have it, S is reading already!
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