NIGEL’S SECRET JOURNAL – EPISODE 5

Posted on May 23, 2020 by Trish and Rob

I’m recording this on May 22, but it pertains to March 27, nearly two months ago, when I made the actual entry. My human has been a little slow getting this together.

In February, I heard my humans  talk about a virus. I didn’t understand the word when I first heard it. My vocabulary with words that begin with V is limited. Vanish, victory, villain, vamos (I sometimes hear Spanish). I figured it might be a name.

Then one day in early March, I noticed how empty our city dog park was. It was me and two other dogs, my humans and two other humans. And while I chased my ball and the Frisbee, I overheard the humans talking about virus and numbers. Lots of numbers. And which states and countries had the most cases.

And I figured out that virus is an invisible enemy. It travels from person to person unless they’re separated by at least six feet, which these humans were doing. Virus apparently doesn’t have a scent. It’s not like squirrel, a word we dogs know well. Squirrel has a distinct smell – not pleasant, but enticing, exciting, you imagine what if I catch that squirrel?

I also notice that no other dogs come over to play these days. It’s  just me and the cats, who enjoy going outside now because the weather is no beautiful. I love them, but they aren’t much fun. So I bug my humans to play with me. I drop Frisbees and balls in their offices and since I know when it’s time to go to the dog park, I go into their offices and start panting really hard.

Two days ago when we went to the city dog park, I had the place to myself. It’s a weird feeling, all this space to run after balls and Frisbees, but no dogs. No squirrels, either. The humans sat at the picnic table in the shade and played with their phones. I kept dropping the ball or the Frisbee under the picnic table so they’d have to put down their phones to retrieve my toy and toss it.

I was doing that on the way into the park, too, dropping my ball, then stopping and waiting for one of the humans to pick it up. A woman who was leaving with two dogs, sort of chuckled and said, “He’s waiting for his managers to pick it up.”

The humans thought about that comment and now when I drop a ball or Frisbee, they point at it and tell me to pick it up. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Depends on my mood.

I’m a Gemini, you know, born on June 14 or 16, the humans aren’t sure which since I was a rescue. But I gather from the female human that it means I have two sides. The Happy Nigel and The Please Don’t Bother Me Nigel. I dislike confrontation and conflict and I’m sensing more of it around me now. I hear it in the barking of dogs in the neighborhood late at night, in the way my cat buddies don’t mind being brought in after dark, in the behavior of frogs, insects, birds. I hear fewer cars. And, oh yeah, the city dog park closed indefinitely.

So now in the evenings the humans hop on their bikes and the three of us race through the neighborhood to the park at the end of neighborhood. It’s probably five acres big, great for chasing balls and Frisbees, and in the evening, it’s just about perfect. Cool in the shade.

One evening, there were two other dogs that I sniffed and checked out, but their lives seemed pretty boring and I went back to chasing balls. Now, it’s pretty much me and my two humans.

The park is next to a school. When I was a pup, I remember racing down here with Noah and Nika and the three of us would pause at the back fence, watching the kids on the playground. Noah is still here with me some days in his ghostie form and Nika’s last visit lasted about a month. That was great! I had a dog buddy. Do I want a permanent dog buddy? I don’t know.

Right now, for tonight, I’m sharing the family room couch with my cat buddies. The three of us distract our humans from virus. For now, it’s enough. (Nala is the black shape at the end of the couch ). We’re discussing virus distractions.

P.S. It’s now May 22. The dog park is open! Nika is visiting again! I hope this means that life is slowly returning to normal.

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New Moon in Gemini

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Trish and Rob

Love these new moons! And the one on May 22, at 2 degrees Gemini, is a beauty. It’s bolstered by a conjunction of Mercury and Venus in Gemini and by a trine to the new moon from Saturn in Aquarius.

Regardless of where this new moon falls in your chart, the new opportunities that surface will center around communication, information, and its dissemination. With the Saturn trine, at least one of these opportunities will be serious, with a long-term impact.

With more and more states reopening, a possibility exists that if there’s resurgence of the virus, countries may be better equipped to deal with it. In this country, that may mean testing is more widely available and that protective equipment is more abundant. It could also indicate an abundance of communication among government officials and health care experts about the virus, lockdowns, new test kits, a vaccine. Regardless, new moons are about new chapters, new opportunities, so I can consider this new moon hopeful.

Since trump is a Gemini, the new moon (conjunction of sun and moon) Venus, and Mercury all fall in his 10th house of career/profession. Venus and Mercury are conjuncting his natal sun and within a three-degree conjunction of his natal Uranus. This could indicate he’ll be tweeting up a storm, may be speaking publicly more frequently – perhaps at rallies? – and his apparent madness may be more bizarre than usual.

He may do something so totally out of left  field that it’s shocking even to a nation that has endured nearly four years of shocks.  Instead of recommending a dose of Clorox or some other disinfectant or advocating the use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent your contracting COVID-19, it may be some other alleged miracle cure. Or a complete meltdown about Obama. Or Clinton. Or China. Or some other facet of his delusional world.

 

Mike Pence is also a Gemini (time unknown), so he may also be in rare form. Pence, as head of trump’s virus task force, has stated some doozies recently. On Geraldo Rivera’s radio show on April 24, he said he thought the U.S. coronavirus outbreak could be over by the nation’s Memorial Day holiday on May 25. As I’m writing this near midnight EDT on May 18, the number of U.S. cases are 1,550, 295, and the number of deaths in the U.S. are 91,981. Today’s increase in deaths was over a thousand. At that rate, we’ll be at 100,000 deaths in the U.S. by Memorial Day. So much for the virus being over.

So on a personal level, the new moon should be hopeful and helpful. On a national scale, however, that this new moon, in the sign of communication and information, says we should be discriminating in the source of information we use to make informed decisions. And right now, those informed decision probably include things like, Is it safe to go shopping? Eat inside a restaurant? Should I wear a mask?

For the full May horoscope by signs, look for the May forecast in the masthead and stay tuned for the June outlook.

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What Quarantine Shows Us

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Trish and Rob

 

Rob jokes that we’ve been in quarantine since 1985, when we both started working full-time as writers, without part-time employment as a teacher or a journalist. But since we never have been strictly under a nationwide lockdown – unable to run to the grocery store the hardware store, etc., – the joke isn’t quite accurate.

Yes, writers do most of their work alone, but most writers I know also have outside interests. They get out of the house, out of their work areas, out of their heads. They make time for other people, for social connections, for doing things they enjoy. So in that sense, the quarantine, lock down, partial lock down, whatever you choose to call it, has been different.

Our gym, of course, has been closed. The yoga studio where Rob taught is closed. The mall is closed. The dog park is closed. We haven’t seen our daughter since mid-March, the longest period in many years. Even for Nigel, our Golden Retriever, life has been vastly different.

Until WHO declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic, we were doing doggie day care so Nigel would have other dogs with whom he could interact. We also boarded other dogs. Some of them he liked and played with, some he ignored, but at least there were dogs. Before the pandemic, we had Nika, our daughter’s dog, here for a month. Before the pandemic, he went to the dog park every afternoon and wore himself out chasing balls and Frisbees, and sniffing butts, as dogs do. Now, there’s no dog companionship. He’s lonely. He gets along well with the cats and vice-versa, but cats aren’t dogs.

When the dog park closed, we took him to our neighborhood park, riding down there on our bikes, Nigel racing alongside us. Then that park closed so we found a vacant lot where he could run. Now that park is open, so off we go on our bikes every afternoon. But no other dogs go there. A couple times a week, I take him over to a friend’s house. Arlene lives on two acres, has two dogs, and the squirrels on her property are plentiful and he loves chasing them and visiting with her dogs.

But. It’s not normal life. For any of us – humans, dogs, cats. Sometimes late at night, the repercussions of this pandemic, the economic meltdown, the entire mess, washes through me. I think about the people who have lost loved ones who might have lived if our country’s response has been quicker, more focused, and if trump hadn’t dismissed it early on as “a hoax.” I think about how my daughter’s future will be vastly changed, diminished, more restrictive. I think about the countries I’ll never see, the cultures I’ll never get to experience. I think about our mortality.

But tonight, as I listen to the wind outside, as Nigel and the cats and Rob sleep, I also think about how this country could emerge as a better, more egalitarian place. The age of Aquarius and all that.

In December, both Jupiter and Saturn enter Aquarius, the sign of the visionary, the rebel, the sign of revolution. Perhaps the 99 percent will find their collective voice and rise up against the one percent and demand a decent minimum wage, universal health care, and a real say in the system their taxes fund.

Perhaps the republican party as it exists now will be swallowed up by its own greed and corruption and the democrats will really stand up for what they profess to represent: the people. Perhaps the anachronistic electoral college will become as extinct as the 467 species that have vanished in the last decade and our presidents will be chosen by popular vote, not the parties, not the delegates. Maybe we’ll finally wake up to the threat of climate change and realize that COVID-19 may be one way the planet is fighting for its own survival.

And so are we.  I mean, c’mon, we’re reduced to THIS?

If nothing else this, pandemic has revealed just how democracy has failed, where the constitution is weak, and where the inequalities lie. It has laid bare the simple fact that we haven’t had  federal guidance, a federal plan, and that trump really is the manifestation of America’s dark underbelly. He’s the emperor without clothes, the little man behind the curtain in Oz, and he has served his purpose. It’s time we find and shout our collective  voice.

So please, can we now move on?

IP.S. It’s now May 19. Florida opened up yesterday. The dog park is open. There’s toilet paper on the shelves, paper towels, flour. We saw our daughter this past weekend. We can go out to eat in restaurants, go to the gym, have our nails done. We can now move about as though the old normal is back and better than ever.Except: yesterday, Florida had nearly 900 new cases. More than 91,000 people in the U.S. have died. And although the curve seems to be flattening in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, it’s spiking in the rest of the country.  It seems we’re still transitioning from the “old” normal to the “new” normal.

 

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The Mystical Underground: Indiana Jones And The Synchronicity Matrix

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Trish and Rob

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Indiana Jones And The Synchronicity Matrix”:

Dr. Bernard Beitman is the first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to attempt to systematize the study of coincidences. He is a visiting Professor at the University of Virginia and former Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He attended Yale Medical School and completed a psychiatric residency at Stanford. He is also author of Connecting with Coincidences:The New Science of Using Synchronicity and Serendipity in your Life.

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Back to Arcturus: A Tribute to Connie Cannon

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Trish and Rob

Some of you who have visited the blog over the years may have noticed that one person who often responded to our posts with relevant and often expansive comments hasn’t been seen for awhile. Her name is Connie Cannon. She died April 13 in St. Augustine, Florida,where she had lived for nearly 30 years.

Connie was an amazing woman who enchanted us and others with stories from her lifelong journeys through the world of the paranormal. Initially, she had contacted us after reading one of Trish’s paranormal suspense novels.  We found out that she was a psychic/medium and Trish once had a reading from her that lasted three hours. During that time, Trish wasn’t allowed to speak.

Not long afterward,  Connie stopped giving readings because of health issues. In the years that followed, we learned of her journeys through the world of Wicca and her involvement in a coven in Atlanta. Interestingly, she had graduated from Druid High School in Atlanta, an appropriate name that sounds a bit like Harry Potters Hogwarts School. To that end, beyond her Wiccan journey, she was also a 33rd degree Mason.

In the daily world, she went on to nursing school and worked for years as a respiratory therapist. She also became a personal assistant to Dr. Forrest Bird, renowned inventor of the Bird respirators and ventilators. She married and had three children.

Connie was called occasionally by police departments in Atlanta to help in solving cases, and she was also involved in dealing with hauntings and sending trapped spirits on their journeys. Along the way, she dealt with some nasty beings that didn’t want to let go of earthly trappings.

Beyond all that, it was years after we became friends with Connie that she revealed she was an alien abductee and had been taken repeatedly from early childhood and well into adulthood. Most often it  was the greys, who seem ever present in these abduction scenarios. But she also had contact with a variety of other beings who came in various shapes and forms.

Connie’s stories found their way into our books on the paranormal. We included so many of hers in Synchronicity and The Other Side that we gave her a pseudonym for some of the stories. We could easily have written a book just about her various experiences, but she was wary of putting herself out to a wider audience, mainly because she didn’t want to attract any more dangerous encounters than the ones she’d already experienced. That said, we’d hoped to  have Connie on our podcast, The Mystical Underground. But by the time we began the podcast, she was already quite ill and no longer able to even come to our blog.

Before I began to write this post about Connie’s passing, I went to the blog and put her name in our search engine. The first thing that came up was the following blog post that featured Connie’s unusual sense of where she’d come from and where she would be going after this life. It is, of course, an appropriate synchronicity.

Here it is from Feb. 27, 2017:

We don’t get many synchronicities about other star systems. But here’s one about Arcturus, courtesy of Connie Cannon. Connie has provided us many unusual stories over the years. And this one is right up there. Enjoy…and maybe you can even answer her question.

+++

With permission from the MacGregors, I have a story to share. There is a question in it, and also a profound synchro. So, here goes…..and I promise to not add or omit anything.

Occasionally I have mentioned my Dad here on the blog. That is because during the eighteen years he was in my life prior to his death at 42, he had the most significant and permanent influences on the person I am. When I was in high school, we lived in Arcadia, CA, which is next to Pasadena. Dad, as previously mentioned, was a cattleman. He was strong, extremely grounded, down-to-earth, had been an award-winning athlete in track and field and swimming when he was in school, he was a 33rd Degree Mason, and he was a math genius. But there could never be a sweeter, more kind, more quietly spiritual man.

From the time I was able to walk, he took me with him to the farms and ranches where he bought cattle, and we rode our horses among hundreds of cattle in meadows and pastures and sometimes n pens.

Our home was located ten blocks from the base of the mountains, and on clear days, the white dome of the Mt. Wilson Observatory could be easily seen. From time to time, before he became ill, my Dad would drive me up to the Observatory. Inside, we would sit in reclining chairs in the darkened arena, and the heavens would very slowly revolve around above us, with an unseen narrator describing what we were seeing.

During out initial visit, Dad leaned over and whispered to me, pointing at a very large, very bright orange orb. He said, “Honey, that Star is Arcturus. It is our Home. We came to Earth from there, and we go back to there. It’s our Home”. My Father had never lied to me, and I had no reason to doubt what he was telling me. As I gazed at that bright orange Star, a tremor of a thrill enveloped me. I asked, “Daddy, how did we get here, and how do we go back?” His response: “Deep, deep within the Great Giza Pyramid in Egypt, deeper than Man can go, there is a portal; a vortex. That is our doorway between Earth and Arcturus. We come and go through that portal.”

I was completely absorbed, enthralled, astonished, and I KNEW, even tho I was only 17, that I was looking at my True Home.

That was in 1958, so of course computers were not available, which meant encyclopedias were the sources for research. I went to World Book and Compton’s and every text on astronomy that WAS available. I learned that Arcturus is close to us, just 37 light years away, and that it is actually a giant red star but appears orange to the naked eye. I learned that it resides in the Constellation Bootes, and other similar facts.

Once in a while I would ask to be taken to the Observatory, and Dad would drive me up the mountain again, and I never ceased feeling such a powerful sense of BELONGING, and of YEARNING, whenever I gazed at Arcturus.

It became totally stunning to me fairly recently…..decades after the fact of learning where I belong. And here is what I learned: Arcturus derives from the Greek words
“arktos”, meaning “bear”, and “ouros”, meaning “guardian”. But THIS is what has blown me away, and it was not available to us in 1958 except perhaps in university library texts. As stated, Arcturus is in the Bootes Constellation, Bootes is pronounced “boo-oh-tees” and it’s meaning? “HERDSMAN” I couldn’t believe what I was reading, because what was my Dad? He was a HERDSMAN, a CATTLEMAN, who spent his working years herding and buying cattle. He could not possibly had known that about Arcturus, except perhaps and probably on his Souls Level.

That is one of the most astonishing synchros I have ever seen, and it simply takes my breath away.

But, I have a question for anyone and everyone on the blog; Is anyone else here who originated from Arcturus? I would so very much like to know!

One more comment…..I had a dear friend for many years, Sherry, who was born eight days after I was born. She lived a few blocks down the beach from us, and was
incredibly spiritually evolved and knowledgeable. (She died three years ago.) Sherry and I often exchanged books, and one day she dropped by to bring me a book. I had never mentioned anything to her about Arcturus. It was something I have felt extremely cautious about disclosing, even to my closest spiritually-minded friends.
The title of the book Sherry brought me that day: “WE, THE ARCTURIANS”. I almost fell to the floor is shock. She told me she had been “guided” to bring me the book….thst SHE was Arcturian! She’s gone Home now.

Are there any more of us HERE?

Thank you all for listening. I’m Homesick, I think.

Star Seed Portal: Arcturus

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Meditation with the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Trish and Rob

This evening, thanks to technology (Zoom) and Bill Homann, we did a group meditation with the Mitchell Hedges crystal skull. The intention was healing the planet of COVID-19.

Last summer, Bill came to our house and a group of us meditated in person with the skull.  That was powerful. The intention that night, August 31, was to chase Hurricane Dorian back out into the Atlantic. It had stalled off the coast of Florida. The next day, Dorian began to move away from Florida.

Surprisingly, this meditation through Zoom was also powerful. There were 20 of us from various part of the country and Bill led us through the meditation. At one point, I opened my eyes and saw the turquoise in the skull’s eye and grabbed my photo and snapped a photo.  I wanted to know if I was imagining it or if it was real. Then I saw the color change to purple:

Another woman who was meditating said she “saw” a lot of different colored crystals as she meditated and wondered if the colors I saw were a part of the same mosaic. The skull definitely emanates a powerful energy that you feel, even at a distance like this. I felt euphoric by the end of it and snapped a final photo. The color had changed to pink.

Rob and I both heard a clacking noise and asked Bill about it. He also heard it, but it wasn’t coming from within his room.

If you missed our podcast on The Mystical Underground with Bill, you can find it on any podcast platform or here.

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More on astrology and corona

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Trish and Rob

Several days after I posted something on astrology and the corona virus, I received an intriguing email:

Message:
In the process of comparing corona virus deaths with mild cases. I’m counting number of aspects involving each planet in the natal chart. Highest counts are Jupiter 25 Mild, 12 Deaths. Pluto 29 Mild, 21 Deaths. 60 charts so far. Orb 0.

This email conveyed several things. The person who wrote it probably works in the health profession, has access to birth information for patients and for the times of death as well as medical info about the patients’ infections. He also knows astrology. He noted that the orbs he uses are 0 degrees; that means they’re exact. I replied and asked what types of aspects did these transiting planets make to patients’ natal charts? That’s important.

An aspect is the angle a planet makes to another planet. In this instance he was referring to the angles that transiting planets make to natal planets.

A conjunction – 0 -5 degrees – is same sign, same or close to same degrees. It reinforces the energy of the sign, house, planets.

A sextile is a 60-degree angle with a few degrees on either side. Sextiles are facilitators, points of ease, of flow. Think air/fire signs, like Aries/Gemini.

A square is 90 degrees or a few degrees on either side of an exact square. Squares are points of friction and conflict. They’re challenging, like the itch you can’t scratch. Example: Gemini/Virgo. Libra/Capricorn

An opposition refers to planets that lie 180 degrees apart (again within a few degrees). Oppositions are tug of wars between energies. They’re also like see-saws. Aries/Libra. Taurus/Scorpio. Gemini/Sagittarius. Cancer/Capricorn. Leo/Aquarius. Virgo/Pisces.

There are other, minor aspects, but these are the big four.

So you can see why I’m curious about the particular aspects (that he says are exact), he’s looking at. He says they involve Jupiter and Pluto, which are both in Capricorn right now. And in which houses do these aspects occur? To which planets in the natal chart? He says he’s done 60 charts so far. That’s the start of a data base!

The man hasn’t answered yet, but I hope he does.

UPDATE – 4/9

I heard from Gil. He doesn’t work in the health field,  a reminder why I should never assume anything! Here’s his email:

Hi Trish,

Thank you for your enthusiastic response but you give me way too much credit. I’m not a medical worker and have no special access to data. I collected 60 birthdates, no birth times, from the internet. 30 deaths and 30 mild cases. Having read your item on the corona virus which discussed Jupiter – Pluto conjunctions I noticed in my results that  these two came up with significant differences in aspect totals. Deaths Jupiter 12 Pluto 21, Mild  Jupiter 25 Pluto 29. By aspect totals I mean counting up all the aspects involving Jupiter and then Pluto. Oddly enough the single highest aspect count is Jupiter aspecting Pluto = 6.

This is all natal work. I am interested whether the natal charts reflect physical differences in responding to the virus. I can see that you’re more interested in transits which could also be looked though it’s more complicated.

Hope this helps.

What’s particularly interesting about what he’s doing is counting all the aspects from Jupiter and Pluto  based on nothing more than birthday charts. It’s much easier to do this and for those 2 planets, your time of birth doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t change their signs or the angles they make to each other.  I’m going to try Gil’s  method.

P.S. May 13: I haven’t had the time to follow up on Gil’s research and method. But stay tuned for the report on the New Moon in Gemini on May 22.

 

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The Upside Down World

Posted on May 12, 2020 by Trish and Rob

What upside down world? No, no the one we’re living with the virus. This upside down world is found in Antarctica, and  strangely enough it has been verified by science. Here’s an excerpt from New Scientist.

“IN THE Antarctic, things happen at a glacial pace. Just ask Peter Gorham. For a month at a time, he and his colleagues would watch a giant balloon carrying a collection of antennas float high above the ice, scanning over a million square kilometers of the frozen landscape for evidence of high-energy particles arriving from space.

“When the experiment returned to the ground after its first flight, it had nothing to show for itself, except for occasional flashes of background noise. It was the same story after the second flight more than a year later.

“While the balloon was in the sky for the third time, the researcher decided to go over the past data again, particularly those signals that were dismissed as noise. It was lucky they did. Examined more carefully, one signal seemed to be the signature of a high-energy particle. But it wasn’t what they were looking for. Moreover, it seemed impossible. Rather than bearing down from above, this particle was exploding out of the ground.

“That strange finding was made in 2016. Since then, all sorts of suggestions rooted in known physics have been put forward to account for the perplexing signal, and all have been ruled out. What’s left is shocking in its implications. Explaining this signal requires the existence of a topsy-turvy universe created in the same big bang as our own and existing in parallel with it. In this mirror world, positive is negative, left is right and time runs backwards. It is perhaps the most mind-melting idea ever to have emerged from the Antarctic ice ­­– but it might just be true. …”

An interesting article. It’s also very curious that these particles are projected from the ground or underground rather than from space, because it seems to nicely tie in with the legend of Antarctica being the location of the entrance into a subterranean world known in folklore and myths as the Hollow Earth. In the hollow Earth theory, people would be walking on the inside of the Earth crust so essentially they would be upside down. It would be the upside down world, just like the New Scientist article describes. So there you have it, in a sense, legend meets science.

 

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FEVERED AND THE MATRIX

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Trish and Rob

 

 

Today on The Mystical Underground, our guest was one of my favorite people, author and psychiatrist Bernard Beitman. He’s the first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to undertake a serious study of synchronicity. His book- Connecting with Coincidence- is one of the best I’ve read on synchronicity. The clarity with which he expresses himself is also evident in his podcast by the same name.

During the show today, we told Bernie about the best synchro we’ve ever had and he gave his take on it, which permanently changed the way I will think about synchros from now on. But first, here’s the synchronicity.

It was 1988. Rob and I traveled to Venezuela with my parents, the first time we’d gone back since my parents, sister, and I left that country and moved to the U.S. Our destination was the Gran Sabana, one of the most fascinating wilderness regions of the planet. Rob hauled around a clunky Radio Shack laptop computer and found time to work on the rewrite of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the novel adapted from the script. It was an ideal setting to be working on that novel – soaring buttes, waterfalls, forest, an area steeped in legends and myths.

From Gran Sabana, Rob and I flew on to Merida, an area in the mountains, and my parents returned to Caracas, where Rob and I were to catch our flight to Merida. The synchronicity happened while we waited in line for that flight.

At the time, the Colombian drug cartel had been using Caracas to export cocaine and the government was cracking down. All passengers had to carry their luggage so it could be checked before boarding the flight. Military guys were everywhere, all of them armed with assault rifles, and the atmosphere was tense, uneasy.

The guards were particularly interested in the man in front of us, a tall middle-aged Venezuelan. He wore a dark, three-piece suits and his only luggage was a briefcase. The guards were particularly interested in his briefcase and demanded that he open it. Slowly, the man unlatched it and the guards leaned forward to see what was inside. Since we were directly behind him, we leaned in also.

There was only one item in the briefcase – a paperback copy of one of my novels, Fevered, a title that described the environment. I used a pseudonym for the book, Alison Drake, so it wasn’t like I could tap the man on the shoulder and tell him the author was right behind him. Even if I’d had proof that I’d written the book, I was too shocked by the synchronicity to say anything.

Bernie’s take on this synchro fascinated me. He agreed it was stunning, then noted that synchronicities like that are clues from the matrix – which I interpreted to mean they’re bleed throughs in space/time about the nature of reality. But I couldn’t fully understand the clue or where it might lead unless I spoke to the man and asked why he was carrying that book. I never even thought to go after the man and ask. The environment wasn’t exactly conducive it – too many guns – but I could have caught up with him outside or looked for him once we got on the plane. I never saw him again.

But after talking with Bernie, I now wonder if that synchronicity presaged big changes in our lives. Less than a year later our daughter, Megan was born, six weeks after that we moved into our first house, Rob’s novelization of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade hit the NY Times bestseller list, and he got a contract from LucasFilms to write six prequels to the novelization. I got another two-book contract from Ballantine.

A year later, in 1990, my editor, Chris Cox, died of AIDS. He had bought my first novel and launched my career as a writer. He had also traveled to the Amazon with us when Rob and I were leading travel writer tours to Colombia and Peru through Avianca Airlines. He was a complete original, a Virgo with a wry sense of humor, and my editor for 10 books. I adored him.

His death spelled the end of my time with Ballantine and marked a “feverish” time to find a new publisher. My agent, Diane Cleaver, did her magic, and I went to Hyperion for the last three books in the series I’d started at Ballantine. It was my first time in hardback. And I was at Hyperion just for those three.

A year later, I still hadn’t sold anything and Diane, who had been my agent for 15 years, had run into personal problems. I realized I might need a new agent and started calling writer friends. It’s not easy to split from an agent who took you on before you’d published anything and stuck with you through five unpublished books. But we needed income. So in 1994, she and I split and less than a year later she died, age 53.

That’s a period of six to seven years after that powerful Fevered synchronicity. I don’t know how far out in space/time something like this might go, but those events came to mind. From now on, whenever I experience a synchronicity large or small, I’m going to be on the alert for the essential clue and and what it reveals about the matrix. And if others inadvertently are players in the synchro, I will now chase after them, waving my arms. Hey, hold on, may I ask you some questions? And I’ll always wonder what the tall guy with the briefcase might have said.

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Panic Buying

Posted on May 9, 2020 by Trish and Rob

 

In mid-March or so, as people began realizing that corona was actually a pandemic and not a “democratic hoax,” panic buying in Floridan really ratcheted upward and paper products seemed to vanish more quickly than they were produced. The great mystery was about the run on toilet paper.

It serves only two purposes, really, to blow your nose or to use in the bathroom. We can’t eat or freeze it. It went faster than rice, canned goods, even beer and wine. Fortunately, I’d found a sale about a week before this panic buying started and we had enough to last us awhile – but not until summer. Or fall. Or through the end of the year. So I was always on the lookout.

Then, last week, I went to our local Publix in the early afternoon and in the paper aisle, I found a palette of TP that had just been put out. Limit: 2 rolls of a 12-pack. I bought the limit. A masked woman in the aisle also helped herself to two packs. “Wow, are we lucky or what?” she murmured as she pushed her cart past mine.

A few days later, a friend told me Winn Dixie had paper towels. I drove six miles to the store and yes, they had towels. One per customer for a buck. It’s the skinniest roll of paper towels I’ve ever seen, but hey, so what. Today, a new moon day, I stopped at a Walgreen’s and discover PAPER TOWELS. TOILET PAPER. Didn’t need the latter, but bought the limit – 2 – of fat paper towels.

In the bigger picture, these are small, laughable triumphs that I’ve experienced in the aftermath of hurricanes. But the aftermath of a storm is relatively brief – 10 days is the most I personally recall, after Wilma, when the power grid around here went down. Andrew in 1992 was worse and so was Karina in 2005. For Puerto Rico, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria was like Armageddon and featured trump tossing rolls of paper towels to people in a crowd.

From friends in various part of the country, I read about their particular shortages and concerns. Right now, in those states that are planning to reopen  or already have,  I hear:

How’re tattoo parlors, nail salons. hair salons, and massage parlors going to practice social distancing?

It doesn’t look like anyone on Jacksonville Beach is social distancing.

Huh?

I’m staying put even if the governor opens the state.

Cases in Florida continue to rise – more than 35,000 as of May 2. Worldwide: nearly three and a half million. Deaths in the U.S : more than 67,000. Worldwide: nearly a quarter of a million. Up, up. Not down. That’s nowhere near the 50 million dead from the Spanish influenza. But the bottom line is that we don’t know the truth total of cases because the millions of tests  a day the administration has been touting  aren’t there.

So here we are, waiting for a new normal with many speculations about what it may look like.

P.S. May 8 – on Monday, May 11, Florida begins its phase 1 of the reopen plan. Tonight, there are 39,999 cases of corona in our state  and over 4 million worldwide. The policy seems to be, Pretend it’s the flu. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Go forward, folks. And good luck. You’re on your own. 

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