Leftovers #74

I went to see Past Lives for the second time with Jordanne. It was a 3.20pm showing on a sunny Thursday, and I was cold for the first time in weeks. I smiled at the parts I knew were coming, the few Korean words and fillers that I do recognise and at every landscape scene of Seoul where I’ll be returning after two decades in just over a month’s time. We sobbed at all the same parts, parts that I hadn’t cried at the first time I watched this in a Vancouver cinema in June, and as we watched the credits roll I found myself searching for breath, the crying coming from the heart, a type of cry that I haven’t done since last year and the heartbreak and it came right from that tear down the middle which is neatly sewed up, with perhaps a few stitches unravelling. We emerged into the heat of a perfect late summer’s evening, out into the chaos of Soho. I cycled across London Bridge with London Grammar ringing in my ears to eat tahdig and blackened chicken shrouded in barberries and talk about all the things I had noticed the second time round.