Soulmates

Working in a library, I love the serendipity of finding random books/music/videos from browsing. (Well, I'm not really browsing. I'm helping with the shelving because we are down some staff members due to illness. But one has to look at what one is shelving before putting it on the right spot on the shelf, right?)
Yesterday I found a Ben Folds cd, and granted, it only had one song on it that I liked, but the message in that one song is very thought provoking. It is called From Above, from the Lonely Avenue cd, and the lyrics are:

They even looked at each other once
Across a crowded bar
He was with Martha
She was with Tom
Neither of them really knew what was going on.
A strange feeling of never,
Heartbeats becoming synchronized
And staying that way forever.

Most of the time
It was just near misses,
Air kisses
Once in a bookstore, once at a party
She came in as he was leaving
And years ago, at the movies, she sat behind him
A six-thirty showing of 'While You Were Sleeping'
He never once looked around

 

(Chorus)

It's so easy from above
You can really see it all
People who belong together
Lost and sad and small
But there's nothing to be done for them
It doesn't work that way
Sure we all have soulmates
But we walk past them every day

And it's not like they were ever actually unhappy
In the lives they lived
He married Martha
She married Tom
Just this vague notion that something was wrong
An ache, an absence, a phantom limb
An itch that could never be scratched.

(Chorus)

 

Who knows whether that's how it should be
Maybe our ghosts live in that vacancy
Maybe that's how books get written
Maybe that's why songs get sung
Maybe we owe the unlucky ones

(Chorus)

So, have you found your soulmate?

kindred spirit

I've been hitting up people I know for donations to the Chamber of Commerce Auction. I got a friend of a friend to donate one of his paintings and went by his house to pick it up. I'd never actual met him  or his wife before and was very impressed with their home and decorating style. His wife gave me the grand tour and I ooh'd and aah'd over their lovely home. Turns out that we have a lot in common: They like Stickley furniture (they had one antique in-the-style-of cabinet) and Frank Lloyd Wright. She told a story of serendipitously (yes, she actually used that word!) coming upon a private tour of a FLW home on one of the islands and tagging along; I told her of our trip to Chicago and touring the FLW homes there. She grew up in Syracuse NY, he is from Oakland, CA. By the time she used "serendipity" in a sentence, I knew I'd met my new BFF. As soon as I'm over this bout of colds and sickness, she wants to come over and see my Stickley bedroom.