Amber & Seeking, Finding, and the Uncanny

Yesterday after yoga and over a plate of green and creamy huevos rancheros, Diana described the experience of finding a hat that she hadn't realized she had lost in a train station.  She turned and lo!  There was something that she loved and nearly lost forever, returning to her.  The experience was, as Diana described it, wholly unheimliche, like seeing a part of you separated from yourself.

(photo by James)

Diana found the hand of fate in the story, that fate was punishing her for having been careless and making bad decisions by giving her this near-loss experience.  I don't think that's how it works really, but I'm glad fate was lenient and only issued a warning rather than a full time out.  And, I was glad Diana happened to look the right way, or else her head would have been cold.

On the long, long (long, long) A ride home, I was thinking about finding things you didn't know you had lost and the importance of being alert to whatever crosses your path when my new bestie, Joe Pug, described a different encounter: of having faith in finding what is missing and the relief of recognizing when you do find it. "Before we met, I knew we'd meet," Joe sang.

And, I was glad for everything that has happened to me up to that moment.  I was glad for working at MTI to meet Hillary who introduced me to Jeff who gave me the gifts of CRD and Amy Bee, and I was glad for liking the Pixies so that I would have something to talk about with Kevin so that down the road I could meet Diana, and  I was glad for Jimmy's lousy roommate in 3rd Avenue North so that he moved into the Brittany and years and years later we could take a bus to a mall in Madisonwisconsin where I would live and meet Nick.

(photo by James)

I certainly didn't know I was going to meet any of the people who are so special to me, but I certainly hoped it on some level.  People are like a box of pieces from an infinite number of different puzzles.  We never fit together quite perfectly, but some fit together really well and the patterns we form are abstract and complicated and beautiful and something quite different from what we were on our own.

And that made me think of this song.



And somewhere in the middle lies the truth.  You might not even know that you want to find what you're missing, but sometimes you get exactly what you need if you're looking in the right direction.

Or something like that.