May 31 2000
There are so many things
There are so many things I’ve been meaning to write about lately, but just haven’t been able to find the right words. I wanted to describe how much I loved Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — to talk about what qualities of the story enchanted me. I intended to top that off with a description of my mad dash across eight long city blocks to a book store where I could pick up copies of the two Harry Potter books I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading. I wanted to gossip about an attorney from my old firm whom I ran into at a deli on the way back. I was shocked to learn he had also moved on to a new firm. He had always seemed like such a fixture there. Last but not least, I wanted to talk about a movie Robert and I watched last night, dogma. It was somewhat amusing–and definitely irreverent. But what about it most interested me was the character named Serendipity. She made Robert finally fess up and admit that he didn’t know what the word meant. I made him look it up in the dictionary and here’s what he found:
serendipity n. [coined (c. 1754) by Horace Walpole after The Three Princes of Serendip i.e. Sri Lanka, a Pers fairy tale in which the princes make such discoveries] an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally.
I must hurry and catch the bus…more later.
