Giant soap bubbles - Bulles de savon géantes from Ebullitions on Vimeo.

This video makes me want to cry, and it took me a while to figure out why. This is because there's really no good word for the feeling it creates, that happy-sad feeling I get from watching something that's beautiful in a bleak way, uplifting in a quiet, melancholy way. The doleful music, the bare trees, the man alone with his unlikely, unwieldy, ineluctably temporary creations. It's so ridiculous what he's doing, and so perfect. Why shouldn't we all send our time creating whimsical will-o'-the-wisps, beautiful shimmering bubbles made just to pop? (Also: how on earth does he do it? I can't even blow a decent marble-sized bubble with the crummy drugstore soap solution I have!) And does it help knowing he's in France? Probably.

I usually call this feeling, in my mind, Funny-Cry-Happy. It was the name of a dollar store in Chicago I used to pass on my daily bus ride. I never went to store and have no idea what they were actually trying to say with its name, but I loved the phrase. And that's just how I feel about this video: Funny-Cry-Happy. It's not exactly a word, but it works. It's a feeling to hold onto and appreciate, despite—and maybe because of—the fact that's so hard to pinpoint.

via The Kid Should See This.