Sunday, July 27, 2008

Reality and Surreality Revisited

So I mentioned that I'm starting to believe the giant snail beast I saw on the night when I landed in India was a hallucination.

On the other hand, I'm finding some things I thought I hallucinated are real. Take, for instance, the shadow I saw out of the corner of my eye in my kitchen. A closer glance revealed that, yes, there was something in my kitchen: a lizard clambering behind my fridge.

And speaking of my fridge...

The other night I was working on my computer at the little bar in the kitchen and I opened up the fridge just to stare at its contents and see if anything looked appealing. After an interval, I heard a little electronic song, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home..." I closed the fridge and the song stopped. Isn't it crazy, I thought, how someone's cell phone from outside seemed to coincide with the moment I closed the fridge?

I hadn't given the moment another thought until the other night when I was, once again, gazing into my fridge considering, at some length, its contents. Out came the song, "Be it ever so humble there's no place like home..."

I wasn't crazy. My fridge was playing music. I tried it again just now, just to make sure. You have to wait a minute, but then, there's the little song, "Be it ever so humble..." It sounds like there's a tiny cartoon bagpiper in there, running out of air. It makes me want to leave my fridge open all the time (though I believe it's supposed to have the opposite effect).

I asked Susie if her fridge plays music to her, figuring this was some kind of Indian thing, but she said she's never heard a fridge play music to her anywhere in the world, and she's lived in Nepal, Hong Kong and India. It must just be the really posh fridges that play music.

No comments: