Just a Surprise, or a little Wonder?

“All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”

I came across this quote from Louis Buñuel when checking my blog statistics (an activity that truly leads to nowhere, but I'm still doing that: if they are bad, I could be better, if they are good - they could be better). But this time, instead of the statistics, what appeared on my screen was someone else’s blog. It started with the above quote, but everything that followed was in Arabic (I think). Some posts have the shape of a poem, very short lines. Occasionally there are some comments and a few short posts in a language I can understand. For instance this one, from April 2009:

“If you want to see a Miracle, be a Miracle”.

The entries end in 2011. Shall I try to decipher the mystery? 

Or perhaps just as I peacefully accept the pages filled with unknown signs, I should also accept that days, months, years of my life, written down in an unknown alphabet, have a meaning, too. They are meaningful with the meaning I will never figure out, and there’s no point in trying “to fill in the blanks”.

I got a great present a few days ago. It’s a book with a white rabbit on the cover. It’s one of the best books I ever read. It goes like this (my own translation from Dutch, so I’m not sure if this is how the original goes):

“I’m small.

I’m too small to blow my nose.

I’m too small to lace up my shoes.

I’m to small to dance on a rope

without almost falling down,

and I’m too small to eat

without being untidy.

But I’m just big enough

to hide

until they find me,

to hide

until they find me,

to hide

until they find me,

and that’s why

I am 

a small

surprise.” 

(Louise Yates “A small surprise” translated into Dutch as “Een klein wonder”, which means, in fact “A little wonder” and is not the same thing as “een kleine verassing”).

That’s all. 32 pages with amazing illustrations. And there’s an extra surprise for me on the inside of the cover: a picture which shows a job ad at a circus, and a small rabbit walking by. The ad says “Jobs available for big animals (not for little ones)” 

I’m big enough to hide until they find me. Hidden in my hole, I enjoy the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

A wonderful surprise.