(I don't talk here about finding "useful" things that people have dropped, or at least not that aspect of it.)Ībandoned houses, industrial areas, construction sites and some forgotten places between functions in the city (that the surrealist group in Stockholm started to call "atoposes", or "non-places") have a similar air of being laid out for the chance encounter, with the arbitrary collection of casual objects, trash, junk, thrown, left and forgotten things in different states of decay and going their own way between the different forces of human culture, weather and nature. In other words, a reasonless animation of matter to give it the power of beauty or adventure. The meeting between the eyes of the right kind, in the right mood, with an object of the right kind of appeal can have this magical (or fatal) effect of which the correct definition to me must be poetical. In this between-country things gather for a while, dropped or lost by anyone, or just as well by noone, to be found by the next lucky one that passes by with the eyes in the right direction before the cleaners come to restore the anonymous order to the street. It is between places, not a place in itself. The street is defined as something empty, to be filled with moving bodies, vehicles and people. The experience, knowledge and intelligence of a scientist or artist, though, is a preparation for receiving these miracles, just as we can prepare ourselves with vigilance, curiosity and imagination to be able to see the things to be found on the street.
The brilliant idea, the discovery, the surprise - how can they ever be described or defined other than as a miracle, as a magical wand pointing to nothingness and FOFF! suddenly there IS something.
Even creativity, invention, design of new constructions, owe a great deal of their existance to them. It will always be formed to the other degree by chance, coincidence and opportunities. Life - good or not - can only be planned to a degree. The meeting with an object that you find on the street, for example, is (usually!) not prepared or planned. Mad love creates its own logic, its own perfect world apart from every other reason, using arbitrary circumstances only as a "cover".īut of course, seeing it from the outside, and in general, there is no reason for chance at all. This encounter is for me the only example of chance that had to happen.
I never believed in fate until I met my becoming wife. The value of a chance meeting, then, is not its chance element but when it transcends its chance character and becomes something of reason, be it something marvellous or disastrous. Then, when it does, it leaves its world of chance in order to become meaningful, in a logical world. Written for and published in Noisegate # 13, 2006.Ī chance encounter has the potential of becoming something that responds to desire in case it coincides with the right circumstance.
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