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The cone of uncertainty is the strange shape you see in the graphic above. It’s one of those terms with which most people in South Florida are familiar. It means the predicted path of a hurricane becomes less certain the farther out in time you go and if you fall within the cone, you need a keep an eye on the news and check in regularly with the National Hurricane Center. You’re not supposed to focus solely on the broken black line that is the predicted path of the hurricane. This hurricane, by the way, is actually Tropical Storm Isaac, which as of 11 PM on August 23, is not yet a hurricane.

But today, August 24, marks the 20^th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 hurricane that slammed into Homestead, Florida, in 1992, with recorded wind gusts as high as 177 miles an hour. – 282 km/h.  Andrew was a small, compact storm that intensified rapidly.

I remember that I was in a drug store, picking up a prescription, when I saw a special weather alert about the storm on a TV behind the pharmacist’s counter. I saw the words Category 5 and that our area, just 70 miles north of Miami, fell within the cone of uncertainty. I rushed home and Rob and I started putting up our hurricane shutters – aluminum panels that took hours to install.

In those days, we had the Internet, but it was mostly message boards and bore little resemblance to the Internet in the 21^st century. I don’t think the National Hurricane Center was even online back then. Hardly anything was online. Our daughter was just three at the time, so that night we all slept in one room, with the cats positioned in their usual spots. I heard wind and rain during the night, but nothing extraordinary. We woke up the next morning, still had electrical power, and our only damage was a downed papaya tree.

There wasn’t any news out of Miami until Dan Rather got down there a few days after the storm hit, then the full horror of the storm’s damage became apparent. At that time, it was the costliest hurricane ever and remains as one of the strongest to ever hit the U.S.

Now and then, in a grocery store, a coffee shop, restaurant, the gym, we meet someone who made it through Andrew by hiding in a bathtub, beneath a staircase, under a mattress. Someone who lost everything. After Andrew, people left the area in droves and moved farther north.

The hurricane seasons runs from June 1 to November 30, with a peak in late August and early September. So why would anyone, with any sense of weather history, schedule a convention on any coast in Florida during the peak? If Isaac, as a tropical storm or a Cat 1 hurricane, comes anywhere near Tampa during the Republican convention, as its predicted path indicates, any evacuations will be disastrous.

The locale of the convention is prone to flooding. With more than 70,000 delegates, protestors and media in attendance, where would that many people be evacuated to? Highways will be congested,  hotels will be booked solid, it takes hours just to get out of Florida and that’s if you have any gas in your car.

Andrew changed a lot of the construction laws in Florida, particularly in terms of roofs and windows. After all, if your roof goes, so does the rest of your home. If your windows shatter, you’re screwed. Now, if  you don’t have Andrew compliant roofs and windows, if your home isn’t constructed of concrete, your homeowners’ insurance is prohibitively expensive. After Andrew, more than a dozen insurance companies went bankrupt and many more fled the state.

After the 2004 hurricane season, when we were besieged by storms that seemed to crop up every two weeks, we bought a generator. It powered the fridge and a small TV and could charge cell phones, laptops. But we spent 10 days without electricity, in temps that reached the mid-90s during the day and not much better than that at night. I did a laundry by hand and put the clothes on the bushes to dry in the sun. When the heat became too much, we opened the fridge and just stood in front it, letting the cold air waft over us.

We live on a sentient planet. I first realized this when I saw Hurricane Andrew on a satellite photo and suddenly understood it possessed a kind of consciousness, that it, like all natural phenomena, spoke to us through signs and symbols. Right now the Republican party is in chaos, struggling to redefine itself, and how fitting that Isaac, whether it’s a tropical storm or a hurricane, will probably impact the convention in some way.

Like attracts like.

It’s going to be interesting. Stay tuned.

Lauren Raines pointed out an old post of ours that helped her define the nature of synchronicity. So, with a little editing, we’re reposting it.

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Synchronicity is a kind of twilight zone of magic. It ís the border where our inner and outer worlds meet, the language of the unconscious. It’s certainly not something to be feared. In fact, the more frequently you experience it, the less fragmented you are as a human being–and that’s from Jung.

For centuries, man has recognized signs and symbols as meaningful. In the fourth century B.C., Greek philosopher Heraclitus saw all things as inter-related or following ëcosmic reason.í He believed that events were not isolated happenings, but had repercussions across the entire fabric of existence, that all things were linked by a web of organization created by Logos.

Hippocrates, born twenty years after Heraclitus died, expressed similar thoughts. ìThere is one common flow, a common breathing. Everything is in sympathy. The whole organism and each one of its parts are working together for the same purpose. The great principle extends to the most extreme part, and from the extremest part returns again to the great principle.î

The Roman scholar Agrippa referred to a Fifth Essence, something beyond earth, air, fire and water that held existence together. He also called it the World Soul, which penetrates all things and is a thing in itself. Agrippaís contemporary, Plotinus, wrote, ìChance has no place in life, but only harmony and order reign therein.î

In the Middle Ages, this idea was known as the unus mundus, one world, and referred to a collective knowledge that exists independently of us, yet is available to us. In this cosmology, the source of meaningful coincidence is separate from our conscious awareness and egos, but itís where our psyche and the external world touch.

For physicist and writer  F. David Peat ís, synchronicity is a bridge between mind and matter:  “Synchronicities open the floodgates of the deeper levels of consciousness and matter which, for a creative instant, sweep over the mind and heal the division between the internal and the external.”

Physicist David Bohm  referred to this inner world, this primal soup that births everything in the universe  ñ space, time, consciousness – as the implicate order.  “Every action starts from an intention in the implicate order,” he wrote. “The imagination is already the creation of the form.” In other words, imagination and reality are ultimately indistinguishable. Bohm called our external reality the explicate order because it unfolds from this deeper order of existence. In Bohmís view of the universe, everything is part of a continuum.

Robert Lanza, an M.D. and professor at Wake Forrest University School of Medicine, goes even farther than Bohm  in his book Biocentrism. Lanza makes a convincing argument that consciousness is everything. Remember the koan? If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? According to Lanza, it doesn’t. In his cosmology, neither the tree nor the forest exist if a consciousness isnít perceiving it.

This isn’t New Age happy talk about the unity of man and the universe. It’s science that begins at the quantum level.  So where do UFOs, aliens and abductions belong in these cosmologies? Well, in Lanza’s worldview, if you open that door in your consciousness, then these entities and experiences exist for you.

In the Jungian worldview, these experiences symbolize archetypes that have become active in your psyche. In Bohm’s worldview, these things may be a holographic phenomenon. Astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, one of the world’s most respected UFO researchers and model for the character La Combe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, seems to agree. He said the behavior of UFOs is the behavior of an image, or a holographic projection.

Yet, as Michael Talbot addresses in his brilliant book, The Holographic Universe, UFOs and aliens can’t be just psychic projections of the unconscious, not with all the physical evidence left behind  ñ like the scars and incision marks of abductees. “Given that quantum physics has shown us that mind and matter are inextricably linked, I suggest that UFOs and related phenomena are further evidence of this ultimate lack of division between the psychological and physical worlds. They are indeed a product of the collect human psyche, but they are also quite real.” He theorized that the phenomenon wasn’t subjective or objective, but ‘omnijective,’ something humans haven’t yet learned to comprehend properly.

Physician and near-death researcher Kenneth Ring recognizes parallels between NDEs, abduction experiences, and the mythic realities through which shamans journey. Again, this is not a New Age belief system. It’s science, the study of consciousness and the nature of reality.  Whitley Strieber, author of a number of bestselling books about the abduction phenomenon and one of the most articulate voices among abductees, said that these encounters “may be our first true quantum discovery in the large-scale world: The very act of  observing it may be creating it as a concrete actuality, with sense, definition, and a consciousness of its own.”

All that said, some people are trapped in a fear of the unknown, who say that synchronicities cannot be trusted. That such experiences are manipulated by malignant forces that are controlling you and everything else in the universe, or that the aliens or the shadow people or some other hidden, terrifying forces are running the show. Fear and divisiveness have always been the favored weapons of petty tyrants. Hitler knew that. Mussolini knew it. Dick Cheney knows it.  Don’t fall for it. We write our scripts from the inside out, from the fabrics of our consciousness, from the fundamental tenets of our belief systems, whatever they are.

market, Otavalo, Ecuador

Ecuador. It’s a small country when compared to some of its South American neighbors – like Brazil. But Ecuador, I think, surpasses many South American countries for its cultural richness, the sheer boldness of colors you see everywhere, and for its ancient heritage.

In fact, this is the topic of a report I found today that Megan had written when she was oh, maybe in 6^th grade. There were photos of our trip there – her first, my second, Rob’s third.

volcano in Ecuador

I ran across this report because I was searching through all my files for old book contracts and royalty sheets. I’m not an organized person – royalty sheets were mixed up with family stuff, Megan memorabilia, even mail from readers and notes and letters my parents had written me over the years. No order whatsoever. But the discovery of Megan’s report with the photos  of that trip to Ecuador, were a definite synchro for me.

I have been writing Apparition, the third book in my series of novels that takes place in or revolves around Esperanza, Ecuador. Running across Megan’s report with these photos was an adrenaline kick for my muse. Get moving, go forward, finish this sucker.

Megan, at the Otavalo market – the only little blonde in sight

The word Esperanza means hope.  Thousands of years ago, Esperanza was a nonphysical location,  a place for souls in transition – people in comas,  at the edge of death. Here, a person could decide whether to return to physical life or to pass on into the afterlife. Everything in this nonphysical location was similar to physical life – buildings, towns, cars, cities, countryside, businesses – but desires manifested almost instantaneously and communication was primarily telepathic.

The guardians of this non physical place were cazadores de luz – light chasers – evolved souls whose job was to make sure that transitionals got to where they were supposed to go. Their job was complicated by brujos – hungry ghosts whose only desire was to be physical again.  Over the centuries, the brujos learned how to seize the physical bodies of these transitionals and often lived out their mortal lives. The situation eventually became so dire, so impossible to control, that 500 years ago the light chasers closed Esperanza to transitionals and brought it into the physical world, replete with a history, a mythology. Their hope was that the brujos, robbed of an endless source of physical bodies to seize, would move on. And for a time, they did, scattering across the world.

But about 20 years ago, some of the brujos began returning to Esperanza. Because the town retains some of the magical properties from when it was a nonphysical location, it’s the only place where brujos can manipulate energy to create a virtual  environment and virtual human forms for themselves. They built their virtual world in twin peaks that rise from a desolate landscape outside the city. Their virtual physical forms are real and solid enough to fool most of the residents of Esperanza most of the time and provide the  brujos with a limited sensory experience. But it’s not enough. Ten years ago, they began to seize people in Esperanza – primarily for sex, but also for the experience of physical life. In essence, they are nonphysical terrorists against whom the residents of Esperanza defend themselves.

In Esperanza, nothing is what it appears to be – not the people, the landscape, the wildlife, not even the fog.

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In Ghost Key, available today, Dominica heads to the U.S., to an island off of Florida’s west coast  to form a new tribe of brujos. Her human host is Maddie, the 19-year-old niece of the woman who helped defeat Dominica’s tribe,  and she’s a handful.

Yes, it’s true that the setting for the book is not particularly original: isolated island, quarantine situation. That’s a favorite for many novelists, and with good reason. Your characters are confined. TV does this scenario very well. But you won’t find ghosts like these brujos in other  fiction.  (Excerpt here).  And that brings me to Apparition. My editor told me that for this last book in the series (in my contract) I had to disappear the city.

Really? And just how the hell am I supposed to do that without looking like a complete idiot? Without killing more than 30,000 people? Without someone, uh, noticing? In this era of smart phones and  You Tube, Twitter and Facebook, there is always a witness to everything.

My editor and I went back and forth about something replacing Esperanza, the physical city, with something else.  She eventually agreed to my vision and I started writing.

As I was rewriting tonight, I ran across Megan’s report and the photos she used to illustrate it. At some level, I needed to see these photos, to draw their energy around me, and the pictures helped me to put myself back there. Yes, I can disappear a city.  But what will replace it? Beats me. In fact, Rob, my first reader always, suggested an ending that is enticing. I may not be turning this book in to my editor in October.

in the mountains near Banos, Ecuador

Nika, new dog park before attack

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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.

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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.

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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.

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