Wim Wenders and Christmas wreaths

    In the floral department, in a vase as small as all the other vases, my Cambridge supermarket sold a tiny Christmas tree. Or rather, a small tuft of green, adorned with colorful cotton balls. I brought it with me, and I must have looked so proud and happy with the tuft in my hand that other customers laughed and went to get other similar tufts. The excitement then spread to my flatmates, and I received several selfies with the tiny tree peeking in.

    Perhaps I witnessed the same phenomenon of "contagion" a few hours later. Grantchester Road is a street of Victorian houses, all looking practically the same, with orange brick and large white bow windows standing very close to the wall that separates them from the street. Although there is nothing particular in this description that distinguishes this street from a few thousand other streets in England, the ambiance on Grantchester Street differs from that of other streets, as its inhabitants have enthusiastically adorned their homes with Christmas decorations. Some made snowballs and drawings with white paint on the windows, others hung lights in the windows, and without exception, everyone put wreaths on the door. And since the large windows are at eye level, we can see the inside of the rooms: well-decorated trees, piles of books, musical instruments, Christmas stockings on the fireplace. I thought about how beautiful it all was, but also how contagious. If one neighbor puts a wreath on the door, the other neighbor thinks - how beautiful this is, I will also put a wreath on mine. And so it was inevitable to conclude out loud that on that street, I would surely be very happy. My friend, who has always lived in England, laughed, but replied, 'you can't trust appearances like that. People who live here may not be that happy. They decorate just because tradition dictates.' I found the comment strange, so strange that I had no reaction. I wanted to intuitively respond that it didn't matter whether they were happy or not; if they make others happy, it's worth it. But at the same time, I thought, who doesn't get satisfied by hanging a wreath?

    Yesterday I went to see Wim Wenders' new film, about a man who cleans public bathrooms in Tokyo with care, rigor, and dedication. The film is called "Perfect Days," although they do not seem, at first, happy days at all. The protagonist (Hirayama) works from sunrise to sunset and lives alone, having severed ties with his entire family. However, the initial idea of poverty gradually fades throughout the film and is replaced by a sense of great inner joy, through details that become clearer under Wim Wenders' masterful direction. Every night, the protagonist dreams of the happiest moment of his day and gains strength from it: the hand he gave to a lost child in the bathroom looking for its mother, the ride he offered to his colleague, the small paper with the tic-tac-toe game that someone left in a secret place in the bathroom, and to which the stranger and the protagonist add new symbols daily, the books he reads that no longer fit on the shelves, the music tapes he listens to.

    Interestingly, the protagonist dreams in black and white, and the images he dreams of are represented as moving black shadows, like the leaves of the tree in his garden, which the protagonist contemplates and photographs every day. In the film's end credits, we are introduced to the word 'Komorebi', which the Japanese use to describe the dancing shadows that appear on the ground whenever sunlight passes through the trees. But the moment that struck me the most in the film was the conversation between Hirayama and a man diagnosed with a terminal illness, where the man notices that one black shadow does not darken another black shadow, and together they experiment with their two shadows to conclude that this is true. And I, in turn, concluded that if the black shadow does not influence another shadow, light does, it brightens the black shadows.

    There is nothing in Wim Wenders' film about Christmas, but it is impossible not to notice the similarity between this film and the true Christmas film, 'It's a Wonderful Life,' in which an angel shows how the little things that the character did throughout his life, seemingly indifferent, gave light to the lives of others.

    Which brings me back to Christmas trees and wreaths on doors. My friend is right, all those residents may not be happy, they may be alone, or miss those who used to be present, but given that each one's black shadow does not change the shadows of others, it is better to be light and try to cheer others up. There is a passage in Saramago's book 'Clarabóia', concerning a shoemaker, '- We live among men, let's help men. And how can you achieve that? I fix their shoes, since I can't do anything else now.'

    And as life gave me some little leaves, I'm going to make some wreaths to hang on my door.