Chains

How many times have you gone to the shelves of a library or bookstore searching for a particular item and found something totally unexpected and wonderful? Or searched for a website and found another equally interesting? Or were talking with someone about an unrelated topic and they mentioned a film they’d seen? Probably quite a few. The way this synchronicity, or chain of events ends in a new find (music, movies, books, trout streams) is an exhilarating component of life. It keeps us surprised, and open to what the world can give us. It happens to me almost every day. Avenue Montaigne, a movie that slipped into a discussion about Steve Goodman of all people, was a find. But a more unusual chain was this: read an insightful review on the life and work of Susan Sontag in a recent New York Review of Books by Eliot Weinberger. Had known his work as a translator of the Mexican poet Octazio Paz. Decided to see what we had in the library under his name, and turned up the amazing poems of Bei Dao, whom he also translates in conjunction with Iona Man-Cheong. Bei Dao, I find out, is a haunting, passionate and often disjunctive poet, who has been incarcerated as a dissident since Tiananmen Square. Powerful stuff. Published by New Directions, this led me to consider this remarkable and revolutionary press that has possibly opened more doors into experimental and international literature than any other. Their unassuming little black, white and grey publications have given birth to worlds, universes. Thinking about New Directions, and that concept, literally a new direction caused me to choose an alternate route to work today. In doing so, I ran into a friend and had a conversation I wouldn’t have had. The friend recommended another book. Cause and effect. Interdependent origination. New books. Life goes on.