Sights and Sounds and Knowledge

I am sometimes awed by the gradualness with which life reveals its fullness. I was about eleven minutes into a Seinfeld last night before recognizing it as a rerun. I imagine that any error in my timing would have to be on the side of late recognition, and a significant portion of those eleven minutes was commercials; however, that’s still a big chunk of new-to-you Seinfeld to see after so many years in syndication (and with me being such a fan of the show). It’s like the final piece of a puzzle that fell into place...or could there be more?

Yes, this delicious tension of wondering is life’s mysterious melody. Any shoe might be the last to drop, the final beat of existence’s unfathomable rhythm. It was the one where they were on the subway: George is going to a job interview but gets robbed after agreeing to be the sub in some bondage with a beautiful stranger, Kramer gets a hot tip and wins big on a long shot at the racetrack, Elaine never makes it to the lesbian wedding in which she’s to be the best man, and Jerry goes to Coney Island and talks baseball with an avuncular fellow who’s inexplicably naked. That episode has always seemed strange to me, disjointed, but now I realize that the whole point is that the gang separates on the subway and so they must each go on their own respective adventure. The individual plot threads are not supposed to mesh well.

Life’s seeming imperfections, the incompletenesses that can haunt and nag us for years, might eventually all snap harmoniously together. Someday the contours of human consciousness may be illuminated, and all experience will be taken in at a single reckoning. In the meantime, complete seasons of most shows are available on netflix, but you’ll have to sift through all the stuff you’ve already seen before.