You can't make this shit up
21 March 2010
With some stories you just instantly know that they will never repeat themselves in the way they are happening in that moment. This is one of those stories.
The last four days before SXSW, I’ve been spending with Peter at Parker’s. He is living in the East Village, not far from ABC. It’s a very hipster’esk neighbourhood. Especially ABC is currently doing quite well, because it’s still a bit cheaper in rent, but offers a lot of great bars, coffee places (Ninth Street Espresso!) and a well enough infrastructure. Obviously, we’ve been going out there.
I think, it was a Tuesday night. We’ve been at Mona’s. Parker wanted to go there, because it was Jazz night and he was right about the band – they were really good. Mona’s is a pretty classic bar. Most people spent their time right in front of the barkeep, but most of them were keeping their eyes on the band that night. It must have been about 2am when we left after spending quite a few bucks in there. It was a super evening and it was about to get even better.
Mona’s isn’t far from Parker’s place and we’ve decided to walk for a while. Most of our group did actually. I think, we’ve been walking on A down when we discovered this hopelessly abandoned group of boxes full of books. Their destiny seemed very sealed and it felt as if we would do something good by going through the boxes to at least liberate a few of them. And so we did.
Now at this point I must tell you the following: I’m a big fan of the word “serendipity”. With regard to it’s meaning and phonetically as well. It’s definitely one of my favourite words of all time. No worries, if you don’t know exactly what it means, because it was voted as one of the hardest to translate words in the English language. The Wikipedia article is quite helpful (but don’t click on it just yet) if you want to know all about it, but here the main definition:
Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally stumbles upon something fortunate, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated.
Back to the street. While Michael grew very fond of a book on American history, I’ve happened to stumble upon this book:
The Three Princes of Serendip. I’ve never heard of it before, but “Serendip” sounded phonetically inviting and Parker – if I remember correctly – was saying something about serendipity. At that point, it was practically impossible for me not to take it with me and I did. But as tired as we’ve been after arriving at the apartment, I didn’t pay much attention to the book at the evening.
It changed in the morning.
After waking up, I’ve decided to look up what it actually was that I took with me. Wikipedia was a great help, as always:
The Three Princes of Serendip is the English version of the Peregrinaggio di tre figluoli del re di Serendippo published by Michele Tramezzino in Venice in 1557. Tramezzino claimed to have the story from one Christophero Armeno who had translated the Persian fairy tale into Italian adapting Book One of Amir Khusrau’s Hasht Bihisht1 of 1302. The story first came to English via a French translation, and now exists in several out-of-print translations Serendip is the Persian name for Sri Lanka.
The story has become known in the English speaking world as the source of the word serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole because of his recollection of the part of the “silly fairy tale” where the three princes by “accidents and sagacity” discern the nature of a lost camel.
That was quite the moment. I’ve found – through serendipity – a book about serendipity. Writing this still gives me the chills. There is a reason for that, which I’m not going to go into, because it concern other people too, but let me just emphasize that there is a whole lot to process for me after this discovery and it made my already very special stay in New York even more remarkable.
The book is still in my rimowa case. Somehow, I don’t seem to bring up the courage to actually start reading it, but I will. Soon.