Sunday, April 3, 2011

Flowers.

7. Humming to a tune of Emilie Simon at the flower corner of Place Jourdan, I tried to decide which colour tulips to choose as a present. It's an important decision to make, because the fact that my recipient was to receive pink or yellow tulips, at the tender age of three months, may shape the rest of his life. As I contemplated potential psychological effects pink tulips might have on baby boys, I was reminded of a certain statistic. Citing a research study, a speaker had said that people have no recollection of memories before the age of four. I almost decided on the pink tulips, fully prepared to share this statistic to the parents, were they to question my present for their baby boy, when I recalled that, in the same breath, the speaker had used the statistic to justify the idea of duct-taping his noisy toddler. Wondering whether the parents would appreciate this little piece of advice, I went for yellow, just to be on the safe side. 

8. Feeling, for the first time, like I totally get Brendan Fraser. Near the end of The Mummy, he holds Rachel Weisz's hand, jumping from one rock to another as the ancient Egyptian city Hamunaptra starts collapsing just behind them, successfully escaping nanoseconds before the whole place completely sinks into the sand. In a life-imitates-art moment, I hold my shopping basket, limping (thanks to a bloodied heel) from one aisle to another as the supermarket starts turning off its lights just behind me, successfully making it through the checkout as the last customer.

9. As I try to figure out why my two limits don't cancel out like they should, I suddenly notice that, softly in the background, Bob Dylan is singing about my profession. About is probably an exaggeration: out of 594 words, he mentions the name once, the same frequency that he has ax, fishing, beer, and topless. Still, I am excited; it's not every day that one discovers the first (and probably the only) song about that mentions what one does for a living.

I want to buy you flowers. It's such a shame you're a boy. But when you are not a girl, nobody buys you flowers. [Emilie Simon, Flowers.]

1 comment:

  1. About moment #9: I totally understand. I had the same effect once when I was listening to this Kimmia Dawson's song that you probably know:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2dyWC6mCuY

    ReplyDelete