Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Nika, new dog park before attack

++

This weekend, August 18-19, we drove up to Orlando to see our daughter, Megan. Travel, even short jaunts like this one, often involve synchronicities and this trip was no exception. But the synchros were obvious only in retrospect.

Earlier this month, Megan’s dog, Nika, was attacked by a pitt bull in the elevator of her building.   She was bitten badly in the neck, underwent emergency surgery, had drainage tubes inserted in the wound, got them out, and appears to be back to her joyful, bouncy self.

Nika, investigating another dog at the dog park; foot is megan’s.

++

Megan’s apartment complex has security cameras installed in the elevators, so the fact that pitt bull attacked her is on record. These videos are preserved and available upon request to anyone who resides in the building.

When Animal Care and Control showed up at Megan’s apartment a couple of days after the attack, they asked if she wanted to cite the owner.  The fine would be $200. Megan spoke to the owner, Eric Rose, with Animal Care and Control on the line, and told him she wouldn’t cite him if he agreed to pay the vet bill. He said that he would.

On Friday, August 10, Megan presented the owner’s girlfriend with copies of the vet bill, nearly $1,300. The young woman, Megan says, was “very nice,” was surprised the bill wasn’t higher, and said that even though Eric said he would pay only half the bill – despite what he had told Megan – she  had seen the video and would pay the other half. She promised Megan that she would have money by Friday, August 17.

So we get up there on Saturday, August 18, and although the pitt bull has been removed from the building,  Eric and his girlfriend have not reimbursed Megan.  Eric has not returned Megan’s calls, either. Now, granted, I am manic when it comes to this kind of thing. His dog attacked her dog, it’s on video, and you would think he would do the right thing and at least offer to pay something.

Cross me, that’s one thing. Cross someone I love, and that’s a whole other thing. So I write a letter to Eric and tell him that if Megan has not been reimbursed by the afternoon of Monday, August 20, we’ll initiate legal action. I want to say a whole lot of other stuff, none of it language used in polite conversations, but restrain myself. Sort of. Rob edits the letter and says I should remove the part about do the honorable thing.  You don’t want to shame the guy, Trish.

Well, yes, I do. Sometimes, shame is a motivator.

But I remove that reference and head down to their apartment, knock, ring the doorbell, and no one answers. I tape the letter to the front door, and the paper isn’t folded or anything Anyone can read it.  As I head back upstairs to Megan’s place in the elevator, I remember that about a week after the attack, I was at our local grocery store and was astounded when my bill came to $77.77.

The only other time I’ve gotten numerical repetitions like this, in my entire life,  was during a vacation in Costa Rica, when the numbers were 111.11.

Even the cashier commented on the four 7s:  “You’d better go buy a lottery ticket with those numbers,” she said.

I didn’t bother with a lottery ticket, but I figured the numbers were significant in some way, and possibly connected to what had happened to Nika, so I scanned the receipt into my computer.

Shortly after we arrived in Orlando – and before I taped the letter to Eric’s door- Megan and I had dashed over to the grocery store to pick up some items she needed. The bill came to $33.33.

I did a double take and thought back to the  $77.77 about a week earlier. I mean, please, this is the third time in my life that numerical repetitions have appeared, and two of them have occurred in the last 7-10 days. This cashier, like the cashier who had seen the four sevens, remarked about playing the numbers in the lottery.

But when I saw those four threes, my heart sank. I immediate thought of  hexagram 33 of the I Ching – called Retreat – and knew that Eric and his girlfriend had left town. What I didn’t know was if they had left town for the weekend, for a vacation, or for good.

Throughout our time in Orlando, we checked Eric’s apartment several times to see if the note had been picked up. It was still taped to the front door of the apartment when we left on the afternoon of Sunday, August 19. The concierge at the front desk told Megan he hadn’t seen Eric or his girlfriend for days.

On our way home, Rob and I drove into a torrential downpour. We are were on Interstate 4, ten miles from where it supposedly connects to the Florida turnpike, the road that takes us to South Florida. We missed the exit and ended up spending nearly two hours in stop and go traffic to just get to the turnpike. The trip from our home to Megan’s should take about two and a half hours. It took four hours- but only because Rob drove 90 miles an hour.

While we’re in stop and go traffic, Rob says, “Did you have any synchros this trip?”

“Yeah, $33.33.  And that’s not too long after the $77.77.”

He looks at me, as perplexed as I am. “What the hell do those numbers mean?”

“Maybe Eric blew town, you know, he retreated.” Or maybe that’s not the meaning at all.  We’ll see how it all unfolds from here.

In the meantime, Nika returned to her great dog park for the first time since the attack, and she and Noah hunted for squirrels. As far as they are concerned, all is well.

Rob and Megan, calling for Nika and Noah in the dog park.  I’m behind them, snapping photos. Some things, apparently, never change.

For everyone who saw the movie Zorba the Greek – and for those of you who missed the film –  this flash mob really captures the spirit of the Grecian people. This country has been suffering badly in the economic downturn. But their spirit appears to be undaunted.

This synchro comes from Anne Norburn of Lenoir City, Tennessee, which lies about 15 miles from Knoxville.  As you’ll see, it has an element of the trickster to it.

+++

My next door neighbor is very, very unpleasant.  He comes down to my house constantly, complaining about various things, like how I accidentally blew some grass out into the street while mowing, etc.  He says he owns the street in front of his house and he does not want us there.

So today, my daughter Laura and I had gone to the grocery store and had just pulled into the driveway of our house, which is the first one on our street. Laura asked if we could drive up the road and back because, I’m ashamed to say, she really wanted to annoy our unpleasant neighbor. I told her no, we had frozen food in the car.

At precisely that moment, a car EXACTLY like mine, a four-year-old year old silver Subaru Forester, came up the road, went by us, and disappeared out of sight over the hill.  I was so surprised that I ended up standing there with my mouth hanging open for a moment or two.

++

In addition to the trickster element here, maybe there’s something else woven in, a  car Doppelganger that appeared as wish fulfillment for Laura!

Here is a new missive from Jane Clifford of Wales, who is something of a Celtic shaman. She always seems to have curious synchros. You might recall her last one dealt with beheadings. This one is a bit more tame, but quite mythical.

+++

“I found an owl’s feather at the barn entrance, not a barn ow’ls feather, but definitely an owl’s feather. I have some identical from a woman who cares for injured owls. I work with owl medicine often; it reveals hidden truths.

However, I took this owl’s feather as a hint to connect with the Goddess Athena with whom owls are associated. She is the goddess of wisdom, as I’m sure you know. Although research indicates she seems to be multi-talented, a goddess with multiple roles. I did some more research on her and found an invocation, which I used to connect with her. I also discovered she was born completely formed from the head of Zeus, her father.

The next day I related this curious fact to a friend over lunch. Within the hour, driving home after lunc and listening to the radio,  there was an interview with a man described as the greatest living publisher in Britain today. He had just launched his third publishing company on the net to publish e-books and had called it Athena. The interview asked why Athena, and he explained she was the goddess of wisdom and had been born complete from the head of Zeus!

I took this syncro to mean my invocation to her had worked very well and she was giving me a nudge!

Last week I found a buzzard’s feather at the end of the track. The next day a buzzard behaved very strangely. Driving along the lane it flew out at tree level,very unusual! It then turned and banked over the bonnet of my car and flew in front of my face my side and over the roof. Close!

Such actions are usually a warning for me and the following day I had a very unpleasant experience with an old friend and removed myself swiftly from what I felt to be a toxic situation. It was a full moon in Aquarius and he is an Aquarian!

+++

After Jane sent her synchros, she went to our blog and read the post of the day, which was about the pit bull attack on Nika, our daughter’s dog. She immediately wrote back and said the ‘toxic situation’ that she had just mentioned involved her dog, Tuppence. The old friend’s collie lunged at the nine-month-old terrier and pinned her to the floor. She wasn’t injured, but very frightened by the aggressive dog who was five times her size.

Here’s a friendly little video about synchronicity.

https://vimeo.com/47167247

Dreams are funny things. We go to bed, get all comfy in our sheets and quilts and pillows, and the moment we shut our eyes, our brains go to work, sorting and analyzing  events of the day, week, month. But at some point, that process stops and dreams provide us with the raw material of the future.

Sometimes, these dreams are so literal you know what’s headed your way. Two weeks before my mother passed on, I had an early morning dream where I was at a writers’ conference (and had, in real life, just returned from such a conference)   when someone handed me a post-it with this message: Your mother has died. When I headed out to breakfast that morning and related the dream to Rob and my dad,   who was living with us at the time, my dad said, “I dreamed that she died, too.”

Right then, we both knew her death was imminent.

Since then, I pay attention to these early morning dreams, which seem to deliver clues about what’s coming up in my life. On August 1, I had one of those early morning dreams and it bolted me into full wakefulness. I glanced around the room, taking stock, taking inventory.

Thanks to the night light in a nearby bathroom, I could see Noah snoozing on a quilt next to his crate, the place Nika occupied when she lived here. Simba, our five-year-old orange tabby featured  in the photo above,  was stretched out alongside me. As usual, Rob was hogging the pillows. I flipped over onto my back and Simba climbed on top of me and as I shut my eyes, I remembered my dream:

I hurry up the hallway from the bedroom and encounter Simba. He has been dismembered by a dog – his body literally cut in half, and is somehow still alive. I’m freaking out, shrieking for Rob, screaming that we need to get Simba to a vet.  Simba, like our other two cats, came to us through our daughter, Megan. She chose him, he’s our only male cat, and for a long time, he used to sleep with her.

In the dream, my dad suddenly materializes. “He’s in pain, Trish,” he says (or something like that), and pulls out a puny .22 pistol and shoots Simba, ending his misery.

In real life, my dad never shot anything. He owned a .38 because in his later years he became paranoid about robbers, break-ins, etc. So now I’m beginning to think that dream was a hint  about what was coming up for Megan’s pet (Simba in the dream, Nika in waking life): A dog (pitt bull) attack in the neck, which necessitated drainage tubes in her neck.  I also think it’s a synchronicity in terms of after life communication; my dad often appears in my dreams to deliver messages, warnings, affirmations.

If I had been paying closer attention, I might have been able to warn Megan to be vigilant about  Nika when it came to other dogs. But, frankly, this option never occurred to me.

And that’s the challenge with precog dreams, at least for me. The interpretation. I know I drove Simba crazy, checking on  him every hours of the day. But…

++

The update on Nika: the tube in her neck has been removed, she’s her usual bouncy, joyful self. Today, Megan presented the owner of the pitt with the vet bill for Nika – $1300 and loose change. The woman promised she and her boyfriend  would pay by next Friday. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll be knocking at their door on Saturday. I’m a pretty laid back person until an injustice hits someone I love.  And then it’s not a pretty sight.

Lori McDermott, who co-authored this book with her husband, Brian, sent me a copy in July. I’m squeezed for time, but felt it’s an important book about afterlife communication  and coping with tragic loss, so I asked mathaddict to read it and write a review.  She loved it. Here’s why:

Learning to Dance in the Rain,  by Lori and Brian McDermott,  came to me as an unexpected and welcome surprise.

Anyone who is a parent with older teenage and young adult children who have spread their wings and have begun to flee the nest, understand the innate concerns that accompany their children’s ‘coming of age’. We continue to carry the parental concerns, all the while understanding that we must allow them to go; allow them to fly, without clipping their wings and restricting their flights.

And there is, always, the hope that our children will be safe and happy and will chase their own dreams to fruition. We pray that life will treat them kindly and that their falls, their scrapes and bruises, will be few and far between because Mom and Dad are no longer close-by to kiss the hurt away.

When a knock comes at the door in the middle of the night, I believe we instinctively know, before we open the door, that whoever is standing outside isn’t bringing good news. And that is how it began for Lori and Brian: that knock on the front door in the middle of the night. Their beloved, precocious daughter Maia, barely 21 years old, had been killed in an automobile accident.

I was pulled into their lives as I read the preface, before I had even turned to the first chapter. As I continued to turn the pages, I felt as though I was there with them, and that they were here with me. The story of Lori’s and Brian’s moment-by-moment journey through the valley of the shadow of Maia’s transition into the realm of The Other Side reached out to me and wrapped me up in a cocoon of their emotions; of their memories of their daughter; of their struggle to cope with her physical demise, and of the staggering awareness that they would never see her physical presence again in this life.

Theirs is a story that doesn’t censor its devastating tears or its magnificent joys. I didn’t weep until I reached the epilogue, and at that point, my own tears joined theirs in a river of hope; of appreciation for the years shared with Maia: and most of all, of unconditional love for a child and for all that her physical death and on-going spiritual presence taught them and continues to teach them. Maia bequeathed a legacy of her personality; of music and poetry and sparkling, occasionally acerbic, wit.

I didn’t find the book to be depressing. It is filled with uplifting synchronicity after synchronicity; with the undeniable Essence of Maia, who manages to find both subtle and screaming ways of letting her family and friends know she is HERE with them; that she is well and happy; that she hasn’t left and doesn’t leave them.

Lori and Brian use every modality available to them to learn to cope with the loss of Maia’s physical presence. They they take each step of their healing with tears of joy and tears of sorrow, because the two cannot be separated.

The loss of one’s child is, for me, an unthinkable circumstance. For me, there would be no greater challenge and I cannot even begin to imagine such tragedy, or how I would cope with it.

But Maia’s mantra was, and is, “SEIZE THE DAY”. One of her favorite sayings was, “When it storms, learn to dance in the rain!” And that is what her family and friends are doing, and what they are sharing in this book. Each of them is Seizing The Day, and Learning To Dance In The Rain.

I felt embraced and warmed by the messages in Maia’s story, and in the journey her family and friends are taking in the wake of her whirlwind life. She is gone too soon, yet isn’t gone at all.

Read the book. Have a box of tissues handy, but your tears will be tears of joy as well as of pain and empathy, and learn to Seize The Day and Dance In The Rain. It lessened my burdens and left me feeling as if this big bad world is a much better place because Maia spent a little bit of time here.