Things in Life

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Earlier this fall, I was moved to tears by an episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on a long flight. I know crying on airplanes isn’t uncommon, but I think it’s the most beautiful piece of television I’ve ever seen.

The episode takes place in Hong Kong. Bourdain recruited Christopher Doyle as the Director of Photography on the episode. I hadn't heard of him prior to watching, but he’s a long-time collaborator with Wong Kar Wai, whose movies had been on my watchlist for a while. Hong Kong through his lens was remarkable.

Bourdain and Doyle in Hong Kong

My life slowed down considerably after I went through a brutal yet loving breakup in late July. Like walking to breakfast hungover on a Sunday, but the destination never seemed to get any closer. Time was moving and I was moving through it.

On the day of the breakup, I scrolled on Reddit for hours until I was stunned by a video of a car crash. I was lying the wrong way on my bed, eyes puffy and brain numb. Earlier that day, on La Brea and Slauson, a black sedan sped mercilessly through a red light, crashing into several cars and then, ultimately, a gas station. Five people were killed in the crash, but the driver survived. It felt like a kick straight to the stomach. Suffering is inexplicable. Life can end at any moment for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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It felt impossible to ignore mortality after that. The fragility of life was pervasive. In all the slowness and grief, these really intense moments of appreciation, like the Parts Unknown episode on the plane, or the absurdity of getting two flat tires on a bike ride, started happening more frequently.

Breakups create a lot of space — physically, emotionally, temporally. What to do with that space becomes its own existential puzzle, and oftentimes, you spend a lot of it just thinking. I was eating breakfast at my desk when the title of a song I saved a couple years ago popped into my head: “Things in Life” by Dennis Brown. I packed my favorite breakfast that morning: yogurt, granola, raspberries and blueberries. I thought I could cry again, it was so nice; just one of those Things in Life. I wrote it down thinking the title succinctly described the moments I had been taking note of. Maybe it would inspire something down the road.

Chungking Express, 1994

A week later, with no plans on a Friday night, I finally sat down to watch Chungking Express (one of Wong Kar Wai’s movies). “Things in Life” played four times within the first 40 minutes.

It’s not every day we’re gonna be the same way
There must be a change somehow
There are bad times and good times, too

The song is a thematic centerpiece of the movie, comprised of two vignettes, both fixating on the ideas of impermanence and coincidence. Characters move throughout Hong Kong, brushing elbows, missing connections. Yet they find comfort in the space between, performing odd repetitive tasks like collecting cans of expiring pineapple, or sneaking into someone’s apartment just to move things around. It bewildered me that a song from 1986, and this movie about coincidence from 1994 both found me within a week. Whether that can be explained by simulation, determinism, or just by accident, who knows? But I couldn’t ignore it.

So in my own attempt to find comfort in empty space, I made this book

Thank you for looking, listening, and reading <3 and thank you jakob, westin, + connor for editing my essay : )