The Sound of Silence

My heart was a little heavy today, and head like the milk weed. Sometimes I think God battles negativity with generosity. My own thoughts of negative things or situations are egged on by the world and yet I feel that the universe is for me.
The battle is fierce and the clouds of dankness are thick. But God won today.

I remember being very impressed by the music of Simon & Garfunkel when I first watched The Graduate but I never got into them beyond that until a few days ago when I heard an instrumental version of The Sound of Silence in a restaurant in Japan. The song could not escape my mind and my roommate who was visiting me would hum the harmony with me as i worked out the melody with my own hums. Then I looked up this old recording of a performance

When they talk about people not loving each other in the beginning, that's where my heart was feeling heavy. But as I said God won today. And the people of Japan have been very generous. We decided to go to Dominoes today. I used to work at Dominoes and I can tell you that in America Dominoes is not a group that is happy to serve anyone. But these workers were legitimately happy to serve us pizza. They were so moved by the spirit of service that they gave all of us Dominoes soup bowls that I didn't know existed.

Unfortunately their generosity was lost on this ol' poopy pants pupil. But the universe did not give up on me. As I became progressively more self-aggravating as the night went on, I felt that the only remedy would be some good old fashion mac donald's french fries. And so I walked all the way down there to find out they were already closed. So I figured I'd go down to the Lawson Station and pick something up, which I did. But I really wanted meat. And Yoshinoya was close, and open. So I went.
Upon ordering and trying my best to describe that I wanted no onion I engaged in conversation with a young Japanese man. His English was about as good as my Japanese so we immediately had something in common. He asked me how I was, I asked him how he was. And that was about the gist of it. So here is where the sound of silence and the universe come together to win tonight. The song talks of people who are talking without speaking and hearing without listening. If I could have said more in his language or if he knew more of mine, I would have talked to him and he would have heard me. But instead I think he listened to me and I spoke to him without him hearing anything or me talking at all. And he bought my meal. I understood that even though we were strangers, I was a guest in his country and we were brought together for a purpose.