These Are Days

Life may often bore us with its ever-so-graceful adagio pace, only to give it a twist soon after and have everything happen to us all at once. Fortunately, the stale waters of my days saw their stream resume its course tenderly; springs of fresh impressions. It began on a wearisome Sunday, when, to shake off its blues, I went to the cinema. There, I realised my city was holding a Ghibli Studio film festival.

The festival was already midway, but luck was on my side and I got tickets for most of my favourites. In true Ghibli fashion, the screenings took me with heartfelt joy to unexpected places all round the city. That’s how I caught one of the rare sessions of Ocean Waves, in a building by my favourite beach. It was the first film by the Japanese studio I had watched. The big screen only made it better.

Like the protagonist from Whisper of the Heart, I was subjected to a handful of happy little accidents^[1] that filled my life with meaning. It made me think of Dale Cooper, a character from the series Twin Peaks, and his overall optimistic outlook on spontaneity. Don’t plan it. Don’t wait for it. Just let it happen, he would go, beaming, before ordering a coffee as black as a moonless night.

Speaking of letting it happen, the drizzly weather of late prompted me to check 10,000 Maniacs’ song Rainy Day. I have no discipline, so I ended up listening to the whole of Love Among the Ruins, Wishing Chair, and Our Time in Eden. I came across the band during a critical part of my move, and haven’t stopped listening to them since. Heck, I left my city to the sound of Hey Jack Kerouac.

It was different this time, however. For as soon as These Are Days came kicking in, I knew indeed life was rushing over me with desire, and that I am blessed and lucky, and the world is warm, and we are blooming. I felt struck by that radical millennial optimism: when we knew things weren’t exactly falling into place, that it would take some work, and yet we celebrated any reasons we might’ve had to.

And soon after, another round of happy accidents. Afraid of going alone, just hours prior to the gates’ opening, a friend called and invited me to a concert her plus-one wouldn’t be able to attend. Her treat, she told me. The performance was outstanding. The band did an impromptu a cappella cover of The Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home, which, given how fresh my move still is, had me in tears.

We took the same cab back home. Just as we closed the doors, These Are Days started playing on the radio. Serendipity, as another dear friend would point out. We gazed at the city to the sound of Sade’s War of the Hearts and Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out. Perhaps it was the music, or maybe the night lights, but that was the moment it hit me. I am living the realisation of a past dream.

Some days later, I stayed at my parents’ so that we could go to another concert, by a folk artist who’d marked my earliest childhood and in whose work I found a haven from madness during the pandemic. And it was there, alive still after such a traumatic period, singing along and screaming from the top of my lungs, that I also realised how happy I am for being alive. We shall get by, to better times.

This piece was written sometime ago, but I forgot to publish it before.

Notes