Hailed, or: The Universe Must Think It’s Being Funny
July 11, 2009
(For those who don’t know, one of the really fun and positive things about my trip to England was the development of a relationship with a lovely Frenchman. Now add an oceans worth of distance and a six hour time difference…)
It’s simply amazing what inanimate, obscure things come to life right before your eyes once they become relevant to you. Two semesters ago, in a poetry course I took, we discussed what it meant to be hailed. The act of being flagged down, being tagged and marked by your influences… Or I suppose, by what you let influence you.
Garrison Keillor is a bit of a champion to my English major heart; I’ve always looked forward to the old timey Americana anecdotes and music on his radio show. In celebration of Bastille Day, the kind and humorous folks at A Prairie Home Companion put together a show called “Vive La France.” This aired as I was driving home from work this evening. I was okay with it. Until a sad and sweet song in that flighty tongue came on. I was in that moment, truly appreciating my near total ignorance of the French language until Keillor chimed in at the end:
“That song was for all the expatriates who, upon returning home can no longer find at home what they had when they were abroad.”
The more I believe the universe to point and laugh at me, the more I want to rise above. So keep it coming:
In the video store ten minutes after Mr.Keillor’s hailing, my mother pointed me in the direction of a movie called The Fox and the Child. The story of an unlikely friendship between a girl and a fox (!)! It’s exactly the kind of thing I would love to see, but upon further inspection, I realized it was a French movie. Oh, ha ha ha, universe. You think you’re clever?
I no longer take every little obscure coincidence as a “sign” of some kind I suppose, but damn if that wasn’t a silly and ironic hour in my day.
We used to have a dog that looked like Garrison Keillor...
