"The moon shines on every path."
Fragments of attention.
More than a month ago I had a really heavy day. The kind where the bad news were not necessarily dramatic, just another no in a string of quiet not-quites. Another job opportunity falling through.
I was annoyed. Frustrated. Sad. Disheartened.
A few more days like that have come and gone.
This post has been in my drafts ever since. I scribbled my thoughts down quickly. Scattered. And yet, somehow, there was a thread of focus too. Just not enough to publish.
I lay on the sofa, half-on, half-off, one leg dangling, eyes fixed on the ceiling. That white, featureless ceiling that seems to know all my restless thoughts. I wished I were somewhere else. Doing something else. I wished this whole process of applying, waiting, hoping, hearing back, not hearing back, it would just end. I kept lying there for quite a while. Staring.
Eventually, my hand reached for my phone.
Not really on purpose.
A reflex.
It happens often. A way to avoid feelings I do not want to sit with, I guess.
I opened the news. Abstract and too real at once. It made the day feel heavier.
I was annoyed. Frustrated. Sad. Disheartened.
There are many days like that.
And then, Megane (Glasses), a movie recommendation by Yasumi Toyoda from Super Ordinary Life, came to mind. It has been hanging as a task in my calendar (yep, I do that) for a while - moving from one day to another, so I do not forget.
The thing is, I am not good at watching things alone, especially movies with subtitles, especially on a laptop, where a hundred small distractions tug at me. So I watched it in fragments throughout the day.
A Japanese film about Taeko, a tightly-wound professor from Tokyo who books herself a break on an unnamed island. But the island meets her in a way that tests her patience from the get-go. She ends up in a quiet inn by the sea, surrounded by people who seem to move at a rhythm she can’t yet hear. Odd, gentle, slightly off-centre people. The kind who smile without explaining anything. They leave her unmoored and irritated. - Yasumi
I liked how slow the movie is, how odd, how familiar, how the people speak more in silence than in words and also how the soundtrack gives that silence its own weight.
I was absorbed. Curious. Gently carried.
My own native tongue - German - appeared, quietly, unexpectedly. I found myself returning to that scene, rewatching it several times after finishing the movie. The calmness, the stoic cadence, the unhurried rhythm.
So, I thought I would let you linger in that one scene with me. First, my own recording of that section in German, and then the moments from the movie with English subtitles.
Thank you for the recommendation, Yasumi. I will watch it again :).