Small moments

My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments – we hear a word that sticks in our mind – or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly – we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed the mallard ducks in the lagoon…

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we could see certain trends emerge from our collection – certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realise that we have been having another life altogether, one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real – this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story making events of our lives.


---Douglas Coupland,
Life After God

Nostalgia

I asked her if she was unhappy; she says it is not a question of happiness. She says she remembers another thing about when she was young – she remembers when the world was full of wonder – when life was a strand of magic moments strung together, a succession of mysteries revealed, leaving her feeling as though she was in a trance. She remembers back when all it took to make her feel like she was a part of the stars was to simply talk about things like death and life and the universe. She doesn’t know how to reclaim that sense of magic anymore.