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?

A lesson in irony

I've just finished reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I vividly remember reading it in 7th grade for a school assignment and it having a profound effect on me at the time. This time, as well, I read it "by assignment" for an upcoming PageTurner discussion group I'm moderating. Bradbury's seminal work is being highlighted throughout the District in October. The irony comes in the fact that there is controversy brewing around the annual All Staff Training Day keynote speaker in September: Orson Scott Card. OSC is a giant in his field, an award-winning author and playwright, and it is a real coup for us to have gotten him to come. Oh, and he is pretty vocal about his beliefs, which may run contrary to some staffers' beliefs. So at a time when we are celebrating a Community Read book on the evils of censorship, the Defenders of Free Speech and Equal Access, (some) workers in this Bastion of the Right To Read, are making (ugly) noises about OSC's politics. About which he won't be speaking. He's coming to talk about science fiction. And fantasy. Ender's Game. New movie (starring Harrison Ford for heaven's sake!), etc., etc., Amen. You have the right to (respectfully) disagree.