Coincidences

Granted a relatively open weekend, and feeling uninspired by the recently monotonous drizzle of Cape Town, we decided to head north, up the western coast, on Saturday, for a brief family trip. First stop: Langebaan, a windsurfers' destination in the summer and a quiet town on a lagoon in the winter. During the 80-minute drive there, I sat in the back of the car and read a few books to Cleo, including the new favorite Strega Nonna, in which we trace the consequences of a rather daft witch's helper named Big Anthony. At one point, Strega Nonna leaves Anthony in charge of her little cottage, so that she can visit an old friend, Strega Emilia, who lives over a mountain. That departure sets the narrative into motion, as Anthony quickly heads for the forbidden magic pasta pot - but in our readings, it also involves a temporary caesura, as Cleo likes to add, for reasons I don't quite understand, an aside. "Strega Emilia," she says, reverentially. "That's a nice name."

With that in mind, you may be able to understand the unexpected joy of a moment that occurred at lunch. After enjoying a soggy round of mini golf at a Greek-themed resort in Langebaan, we'd headed further north to Paternoster, a small fishing village, and we were sitting in a handsome restaurant with rugby playing on a t.v. screen in the corner, and a pleasant fire in the large hearth near our table. The manager of the restaurant, a gentle older woman, came over to tend the fire, and took a momentary interest in Cleo. "What's your name?" she asked.

Now, Cleo, being only three, is not exactly a paragon of manners, and you never quite know what you'll get when a stranger addresses her. Sometimes she turns abruptly away, hiding her head in a violent gesture of shyness. Sometimes she smiles, throws a hand forward almost like a bear taking honey from a hollow in a tree, and says, loudly, "Bop!" But on this day, for whatever reason, she was all politeness and sincerity, and she looked at the manager and replied, gracefully, "Cleo." "Cleo," said the woman, "that's a nice name." And Cleo, as if adhering to an improbably idealistic script, replied "Thank you." We then asked the woman what her name was, and... well, can you guess? It was Emilia.

What is the pleasure of coincidence? I suppose that it largely lies in the momentary sense that the world is organized in a completely comprehensible and fortuitous manner. About a week ago, L. and I managed to catch a matinee screening of One Day on Earth, a documentary built out of thousands of hours of footage shot around the world on a single day (October 10, 2010 - which, coincidentally, was my 40th birthday). Near the opening of the film, we see a barrage of clips, each labeled with the country of origin. After we'd seen about a hundred countries represented, the pace of the film slowed slightly, and we began to see more sustained shots. I leaned over to L., and whispered, "We haven't seen Lesotho yet." Five seconds later, the next shot appeared: an image of young boys in Lesotho. Or take the experience of a blogger who goes by the name Classical Listener. In 2006, he heard part of a symphony, on the radio, by Johann Vanhal. Curious about a name he'd never heard, the blogger looked Vanhal up - only to encounter him again, the next day, in detail, while listening to Robert Greenberg's lecture on classical symphonic masters.


So much does not cohere, does not make sense, does not feel quite poetic. But when the details converge, we are momentarily giddy with the joy of sensed order - or, at the least, with a wry smile at the whimsical nature of coincidence.