The Lilac-Breasted Roller

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This beautiful bird, a Lilac-Breasted Roller, is the focus of a synchronicity that occurred to photographer Thomas Chamberlin. He was kind enough to allow us post the photo and his story.

This gorgeous bird is native to Africa. When you think of an African safari you don’t really think much about birds(except maybe ostriches), and when you are on safari your day is pretty much dictated by the most impatient person in your vehicle. Once one person has had enough and is ready to move on it feels self-indulgent to belabor the current situation and it is not long before you must move on.

On the day this photograph was made I was alone in the Land Rover with another bird enthusiast and author of several books on birds, Wayne Lynch. The third photographer scheduled to be in our vehicle that day was indisposed with a bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge after having somehow ingested the bacterial milieu that is the water of Africa. I remember Wayne saying how happy he was that we would be able to spend some time on birds that day since there was nobody else in the vehicle to appease. We scoured the river banks for birds in the trees. We stopped and shot flight photographs of vultures as they landed at a carcass. When we came upon this roller, perched so handsomely on his perch in soft light, we were both of the same mind. We would stay with him until he either did a wing stretch or flew away.

At no other time on the trip were we ever in the position to watch a little bird that long. People want to go find a cheetah, a lion, a hyena. It took about twenty minutes of perseverance before he did this wing stretch, waiting, of course, until Wayne turned to say something to the driver. By the time he heard my shutter firing it was over.

On one of our last days in Kenya we all decided on our best photograph of the trip, displayed it on our laptops, and set the laptops on the dining room tables to share with the others and the staff and guides. I displayed this photograph out of the 7,000 photographs I had kept during our stay. The camp staff that had fed us and made our stay a delight all timidly approached at first, then excitedly pointed and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed getting to see the photographs we had been going out morning and evening to capture. Sometimes we forget to include them.

When I got home this was one of the first photographs I optimized in Photoshop and uploaded to my Digital Railroad (now defunct; I’ve moved to Photo Shelter), and personal web sites and to Flickr. Out of the blue I got an e-mail from the photo editor of Birder’s World. He had found my photograph on line and wanted to use it for an article on African birds. It made the cover of the February, 2008 issue. I had published photographs on the Birder’s World on-line site before, but the photo editor for the magazine was not familiar with me.

Happy little coincidences that someone would get sick and I would get a day to work on bird photographs in Africa, in a vehicle shared with another bird enthusiast. That a photo editor would somehow find my image out of the thousands of roller images that come up with a Google search (I looked). I have a hard time with believing in fate, kismet, the Lord’s Will. But there seems to be some kind of energy out there that that can sometimes be tapped into, if only for a brief moment. The Buddhists believe that becoming a spiritual master means being in that energy always. I’m not likely to achieve that in this lifetime, but it’s fun to ride the wave of synchronicity when it happens.

https://chamimage.wordpress.com/

Posted in animals, birds | 1 Comment

Tony and the Trickster

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Trish and Rob

The Trickster is a Jungian archetype. One of the best examples is the sneaky, lurking Gollum character in Lord of the Rings, orginally named Smeagol. He usually had an agenda of one kind or another that prompted him to mislead the hobbits on numerous occasions and to trick them into believing he could be trusted. The Joker in the Batman movies is another example. But when we encounter a trickster synchronicity, it’s as if the universe is playing a joke on us.

When Tony, a retired accountant, was in his late eighties, he moved into an assisted living facility in Georgia, where one of his daughters was director of nursing. A short time later, a high school classmate from Illinois – from more than seventy years earlier – moved in across the hall from him. When his daughter marveled at the synchronicity, Tony remarked, “The universe has a twisted sense of humor. I don’t like her any more now than I did back then.”

But in a sense, the trickster had brought his life full circle.

Posted in c6, trickster | 2 Comments

Kurt Vonnegut and Synchronicity

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Levels of synchronicities are often apparent during emotionally charged experiences, evident in a story that Kurt Vonnegut related to writer Alan Vaughn, which he included in his book Patterns of Prophecy.

Anyone who came of age during the 60s understands the unique role that Vonnegut’s books played in the culture of that time. In Cat’s Cradle, he talked about the karass, a group of people who unknowingly work together to achieve some common goal. You knew you were a member of a particular karass when meaningful coincidences happened between you and other members of that group. But in Vonnegut’s world, there was a danger that you might mistake a random coincidence for a meaningful one, which meant you were involved in a Granfaloon or false karass.

Vaughn wrote to Vonnegut and asked him where the idea had come from about people being linked through meaningful coincidences. Vonnegut’s response is included Vaughn’s Patterns of Prophecy. It’s a remarkable example of a synchronicity involving emotions and death—the death of Vonnegut’s sister, who was suffering from cancer, and the death of her husband in a tragic accident – all within twenty-four hours.

One morning Vonnegut apparently felt compelled to call his brother-in-law, whom he never phoned, and who was in a train that minutes earlier had plunged off an open drawbridge in New Jersey. As Vonnegut was calling him, news about a railroad accident came over the radio and Vonnegut knew his brother-in-law was on that train, even though the man never took trains. Within an hour, he was on a plane headed for New Jersey. By the end of that day, Vonnegut and his wife had adopted his sister’s six children. His sister died the next day.

Vonnegut’s experience involves two aspects of synchronicity. Precognition or foreknowledge of an event was evident in his sudden feeling that he should call his brother-in-law. Clairvoyance, also called remote viewing, was evident with Vonnegut’s certainty that his brother-in-law was on the train mentioned in the radio news flash.

The terminal illness and death of his sister, of course, added to the emotional levels of the incidents.

Posted in vonnegut, writers | 1 Comment

Poetry in Motion

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s one from Joyce Evans, who long, long ago was my editor on a weekly newspaper.
Rob

On Labor Day weekend in 2001, I was browsing through the poetry section in Schwartz Bookstore and found three collections by a Milwaukee, Wis., poet named Marilyn Taylor. After perusing the table of contents and flipping through the pages, I decided to buy all three collections and spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday studying the poems. I liked her style and voice. All of this was to prepare me for my poetry course, which started on Tuesday. It was my first class in graduate school, and I didn’t know what to expect from Bill Harrell, the instructor, not to mention the level of difficulty or challenge. Although I had attended undergraduate classes for two years in English and creative writing, nervousness eclipsed the excitement.

On Tuesday morning, I had to take an MRI, which I thought would be over an hour before my 1 p.m. class. That would’ve given me time to drive across town to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, but the MRI took longer. I took the interstate, but it was crowded – as usual. My heart was beating down to my feet by the time I entered Room 426 full of anxiety. The professor was a woman, not Bill Harrell, as listed in the class schedule. I thought I could sneak into class without any disruption.

The professor looked across the room and said, “Are you Joyce Evans-Campbell?” I answered affirmatively and took a seat with thoughts running rampantly, wondering who she was, and how she knew my name, chastising myself for being tardy on the first day.

After class I went up to her desk, apologized and gave an explanation for my tardiness, and she said, “That’s fine. I’m Marilyn Taylor; I love your columns in the Journal Sentinel. I read them all the time.” I thanked her, and she proceeded: “I’m substituting for Bill Harrell who died over the summer.”

I told her that I loved her poetry, and had bought three collections. She complimented me for getting prepared for the class, and we briefly discussed her work. This encounter established an extraordinary first impression, and the two years of study under her went well. That meaningful coincidence opened the door to a deeper relationship and helped me to develop confidence.
***
Here’s who Joyce is talking about – Wisconsin’s poet laureate! https://www.mlt-poet.com/

Posted in books, poets, writers | 4 Comments

#33, Retreat

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Trish and Rob

The next story is another example of a cluster synchronicity involving the repetition of a number, similar to the story about Maria and the number 14.

Some years ago, we flew out to California and noticed that the number 33 kept cropping up. Aisle 33, seat 33, flight 233. In a period of about seven hours, there were half a dozen recurrences of the number. We didn’t have any idea what it meant. So I finally turned to the I Ching – an ancient Chinese oracle that consists of 64 hexagrams – and looked up hexagram 33. As soon as I saw the title – Retreat – I understood what the number cluster was about.

At the time, my mother was in an Alzheimer’s unit, in room 33. Rob, our daughter, and I were in “retreat” from that situation. We interpreted the synchronicity as confirmation that we had made the right choice in taking a break from the situation.

As Frank Joseph writes in Synchronicity and You, “…Anyone thus confronted by the repetition of a number invariably feels that something important, perhaps even divine, is trying to communicate through the numerical symbol.”

Posted in #33, Numbers | 2 Comments

Mom’s Help

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This story comes from writer Sharlie West, one of several that she sent. It illustrates the emotional component of synchronicities, particularly when we’re faced with major transitions and upheavals.

In the fall of 1990 my mother had a stroke and was admitted to Hillhaven Nursing Home, about ten minutes from my house. One afternoon we were talking and out of nowhere, I said “I should have married Jimmy B. He always cared about me.” My husband, Frank, had died the previous year.

Mom look at me, puzzled. I had not mentioned Jim’s name for 40 years. Then she remembered him and said, “Yes, he had it pretty bad.” We laughed about that and then I forgot the conversation.

Three weeks later Mom had a heart attack and passed away.I was sitting in the living room with a friend and suddenly got the feeling someone was thinking about me. It was so intense I could feel the person in my mind and even see his image. He was middle-aged, with salt and pepper hair, glasses. No one I knew. I mentioned this to my friend who shrugged and said it was my imagination.

Not long afterward, I received a letter of condolence from Jimmy B. He had read the obituary in the paper. I was surprised and then remembered the conversation with Mom. He had gotten my address from the funeral home and not long after that he dropped by. It was the same man I had seen in my vision. Since Jimmy was thin with dark hair and no glasses there was no way I could have imagined him in the present.
Three weeks later, he moved in with me and eighteen years later we are still together.

We like to think my Mom helped out.

Posted in death, emotions, mothers | Leave a comment

Madison Avenue

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Trish and Rob

No astonishing, mind-blowing synchronicities–like the Blue Dog tale–came our way today. But, nevertheless, being aware of synchronicities seems to attract them.

For instance, this afternoon I opened an e-mail from my friend Madison just as a five-year-old neighbor girl walked into our porch looking for our cats. Trish called out: “Madison, what are you doing?” I replied to on-line Madison, and mentioned the cute little ‘synchronous’ Madison on the porch. Then I peeled myself away from the computer, walked into the kitchen, and glanced at the mundane photo of a teen girl and horse on the front page of a section of the Palm Beach Post. For some reason, I leaned over and read the caption below the picture, and found out the girl was named Madison. That made three Madison’s in five minutes. Nothing mind-boggling, but interesting.

I also experienced a yoga-related synchronicity today. Early this morning in a half-sleep before getting up, the image of one of my yoga students, who I hadn’t seen in months, came to mind. I wondered if she was still a member of the gym where I teach. I don’t know the woman very well, and for a moment wondered why I had thought of her. So I was surprised when, five minutes into the class, she walked into the room.

After class, she was standing by the front counter as I left. I stopped, said it was good seeing her again, then told her my story. She smiled and said, “Yeah, we’re all connected, aren’t we.”
Rob

UPDATE, 3/6/09
There’s actually a fourth Madison aspect to this story. While posting a new synchronicity tonight, I read Therese Patrick’s comment under the Madison story, that perhaps the synchronicity was a message for her. I mentioned this to Rob and he pointed out there was actually a fourth Madison. Yesterday, he was reading a novel called “Last On Earth,” which takes place in Madison High School.
Trish

UPDATE, 3/12/09
I just received a long, rambling synchronicity tale from a ‘Madsy.’ It was one of those stories in which the synchronicities are significant to the person experiencing them, but not that impressive or comprehensible to ‘outsiders’ like myself. But what struck me was that near the end she said her name is Madison and she attends the University of Wisconson in…Madison. That struck me as synchronous sense, but probably didn’t impress her when I replied with my serial Madison tale.
Rob

Posted in clusters, names, places, yoga | 3 Comments

Eyes of a Blue Dog: A Tale of Triple Synchronicity

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Yesterday I read my monthly horoscope on Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone and perked up when I read that friends from the past would contact me this month. In fact, just a couple of hours earlier I’d received an e-mail from an old college roommate, who had been out of touch – or maybe it was me—for about 20 years.

That sort of simple synchronicity doesn’t impress novelist Tony Vigorito. For Tony, the WOW factor enters when the synchronicities pile one on top of another. The following story is one such example with a BIG wow factor. It was posted last September on the website Reality Sandwich. Tony gave us permission to reprint it. –

This is not a story about the wow and holy cow of seeing your initials on someone’s license plate, or hearing a word you just learned on the radio, or running into a friend at the grocery store. Without offending the marvel of others, these do not entirely impress me, and seem more like artifacts of attention than bona fide synchronicities. (Although, it did give me pause when one reader wrote me amazed to report that when she was reading Just a Couple of Days, just as the main character looked at his watch and saw that it was 5:55 and wished for peace on Earth, she glanced at her bedside alarm clock and saw that it was, yes indeed, 5:55. So perhaps it counts if peace on Earth is at stake…)
In any event, along with sex and tornadoes, my second novel, Nine Kinds of Naked, is about synchronicity. What follows is the story of the evening that precipitated an ongoing cascade of synchronicity in my life that I remain helpless to fathom, save humming one of my favorite lines from the Beatles’ I Am the Walrus:
Don’t you think the Joker laughs at you?
Ho Ho Ho Hee Hee Hee Ha Ha Ha…
So, it was the evening of November 4, 2004, a Thursday, just a couple of days after George W. Bush was apparently reelected president, and a great gloom had settled over the land. It was an accidental gathering of friends at my house, everyone stopping by uninvited, and soon there were six of us, men and women alike, and someone had brought wine, and another a guitar, and cupboards were opened and more wine was seized and the refrigerator was ransacked and a great and nourishing feast was prepared by three as another played guitar and I harped my harmonica and another found a rhythm atop some stray pots and pans. And dishes were washed and a fire was built and we gathered around the fireplace on an old Oriental rug and ate, drank, and made merry as if there was nothing else to do in life.
A bookshelf stood sentry next to the fireplace, and throughout the evening various volumes were pulled out, random passages read aloud, always bearing insight on whatever was at hand, and at one point a friend of mine, a phenomenal visual artist in her own right, pulled a book out of her bag entitled, Blue Dog Man. It was the collected artwork of George Rodrigue, whose signature motif is the inclusion of a blue dog in all of his pieces, a terribly cute terrier/spaniel with eyes yearning for love and approval, apparently inspired by his deceased dog, Tiffany. The Blue Dog book was passed around and soon all of us were taking turns attempting to emulate Tiffany’s sad and hopeful eyes, though even the most determined among us were unable to hold the expression for more than a few seconds before succumbing once again to smiles and ha ha.
And the evening wore on and the men fetched more logs for the fire and conversation grew more trusting as wine and fire warmed our hearts, songs were shared and massages were traded and cuddles were puddled and the heartbreaking political landscape of late America became distant and forgotten, for life is where you are and who you are with, and on this evening neither corruption nor deceit could distract these souls from the obvious joy of existence.
At some point late in the evening I wandered over to my computer (I know I always seem to be online from the light on my profile, but I assure you I have a full and varied existence, and I’m just really lazy about turning my computer off…). Skimming through my inbox, the subject line of one email—sent a couple of hours ago, right around the time the six of us were making Tiffany’s blue dog eyes at one another—caught my attention. It read, very simply,
Eyes of a Blue Dog.
Intrigued, I open the e-mail and it’s from a reader in Toronto and there’s not a breath of explanation anywhere as to why she chose the phrase as her subject line. That’s curious, I’m thinking, but then I scroll down and notice that the name of the woman who sent the email is the same as Rodrigue’s dog,
Tiffany.
My credulity stretched, I call out to the others hey come look at this I’m serious. And everyone gathers around my computer as I show them the Eyes of a Blue Dog subject line and that the sender’s name is also Tiffany and we are impressed and even astonished by this curiouser and curiouser turn of events, but then someone else notices the signature line of her email, which read, in inexplicable summation of our evening,
good atmosphere, good friends, good conversation,
good wine, good books, and the space between.
If there was astonishment before there was now a bedlam of whoa dude and what the fuck amazement. I was charged with replying to her email immediately to demand an explanation, which I did, sharing a more pebbled version of the above story and the next day I find out that she’s never heard of George Rodrigue or his dog Tiffany, but she had recently read the short story, Eyes of a Blue Dog, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and was likening it to the phrase, Just a Couple of Days. Moreover—and this may make this a quadruple synchronicity—she had only learned of the concept of synchronicity a month before in one of her psychology courses, and had yesterday arrived at her parents’ house to find the word SYNCHRONICITY written in all-caps across the dry-erase board in her parents’ kitchen. Her father, it seems, had heard about it on a radio show and wanted to remind himself to read more about it.
So what does this all mean? I originally intended this closing paragraph to be a philosophic summation of what synchronicity implies, but I deleted it. The prose was stilted anyway, and as I sat here writing the summary in my favorite coffeehouse, should it really surprise anyone that I Am the Walrus came on the stereo?
Don’t you think the Joker laughs at you?
Ho Ho Ho Hee Hee Hee Ha Ha Ha…
***
Tony Vigoito’s latest novel, Nine Kinds of Naked, explores the theme of synchronicity. If you’d like to read a fascinating essay on how that novel came into being and more of Tony’s thoughts on synchronicity, go to:

https://www.tonyvigorito.com/
https://www.realitysandwich.com/chaos_collapse_and_synchronicity

Posted in animals, c6, dogs, trickster | 4 Comments

Misuse of Term

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Trish and Rob

I’ve noticed that the word ‘synchronicity’ is becoming mainstream, but the more mainstream the source the more I see the word misused. Writers in the mainstream media, who should know better, sometimes equate synchronicity with synchronize, as in ‘Let’s synchronize our watches.’ In other words, they use synchronicity to mean two things running parallel, leaving out the essence of ‘meaningful coincidence.’

Here’s an example from the Vancouver Sun (3/3/09):

“That view was echoed by Warren Jestin, the chief economist at Scotia Capital. He said the Canadian economy was set to contract by more than 2% this year in a recession that was unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes because of the synchronicity of the downturn in both developed and developing countries around the globe.

“Synchronicity is something that is remarkably different than in previous periods and it’s really aggravating the economic adjustment,” Mr. Jestin said. It appears this factor may have caught the Bank of Canada off guard.
***

Jestin may know economics, but he doesn’t know synchronicity, and the journalist latched onto the term, doubling the misuse.

Now please read the next post by Jim Dee. He first expresses a clear definition of synchronicity, then provides us with a fascinating example, one that takes us into the spiritual realm. Thank you, Jim.
Rob

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Children of the Universe

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s the post by Jim Dee that I mentioned above. Enjoy.
Rob

Synchronicities have long been an area of interest for me, but never more than lately. “Synchronicity” is my preferred word for describing certain events that, to me, are unquestionably meaningful beyond their base coincidental properties.

In fact, the word “coincidence” has a certain dismissive quality about it, don’t you think? Calling something a coincidence, no matter how mind-blowing it might be, instructs others to think nothing of such occurrences, to write these events off as nothing more than peculiar experiences that, aside from their entertainment value, bear neither depth nor meaning.

The word “coincidence,” to me, simply means: I cannot explain that, therefore it’s meaningless. The word “synchronicity” means: You don’t always have to explain it or interpret it. If it’s a particularly positive synchronicity, maybe it just means something general, like “you’re on the right path” — an affirmative, perhaps even appreciative, nod from the universe that, to it, is subtle beyond any measure while, to you, it’s life-altering and amazing. If there is meaning beyond the appreciative nod, you’ll know it intuitively at some point. For now, just be it, just experience its beauty.

Here’s the latest interesting “synchronicity” I’ve taken note of in my life. It happened on the same night as another momentous occasion — my one and only “out of body” experience (itself quite a tale!).

For the purposes of this synchronicity story, the only background you need to know is that something extraordinarily unusual and powerful happened to me on the evening in question. It involved something I still do not fully understand, something which can be described as astral traveling, perhaps. My soul had gone to “visit” with a guru, who later sent me into the deepest meditative state I’ve ever experienced. We’ll pick up the story there…

Just after I’d “returned” to my body (suddenly, around 3:00 a.m.) from this unprecedented journey, my wife suggested that we write down the details of what had happened. So, there we were in the dark, in the middle of the night, scrambling around for a pen and paper. None were to be found. However, I’d been reading a book called “Way of the Wizard” by Deepak Chopra, and it was still on my nightstand. So, my wife grabbed it and began flipping through the pages to try and locate one with enough blank space to write the details of my experience. She found a page and began writing as I relayed the story.

Okay, let’s rewind a bit… A while prior to this tale, my wife and I had been interviewing a relatively new friend and mentor, Kevin, for a promotional event on one of our raw food web sites, the All Raw Directory. When I say “interview,” I mean literally interviewing him — making an audio recording of a telephone conversation, the MP3 of which will be one of the “giveaways” we plan to offer with this promotion.

We’d been working with this guy for a while by then and had quickly become friendly with him and his wife, Annmarie, beyond the level of simple business stuff we’d been working on together. They’d visited our home once many months prior, and my wife had met and hung out with him and his wife again at a festival in Arizona. But, that had been the extent of our in-person interaction to date.

Anyway, during one of those interviews, Kevin told a personal story. I don’t remember it now, or what the context of it was, but I do recall vividly his saying that he has a favorite personal mantra: “I am a child of the universe and I am safe.” It wasn’t simply something he said; he actually focused on that for a while and discussed its particular significance in his life.

Prior to the uncanny spiritual experience I’d had, Kevin and Annmarie had never stayed overnight in our home. But they were in the house that night, when it happened. I didn’t tell them what had happened, but naturally, the next day, I tried reading some of the notes my wife had hastily written in the dark on that blank page of the Deepak Chopra book. It wasn’t until much later, perhaps weeks after their overnight stay, that I began to wonder what else appeared on that page. What was the subject matter Deepak was discussing on that particular page of Way of the Wizard — that page that my wife had flipped to in the dark and chosen based only on the fact that it seemed like there was enough white space to write on, that page that presented itself on the only occasion we’d had Kevin and Annmarie in our home overnight?

Ready for the hair raising finale? Here’s the quote that ends the text of that page of Way of the Wizard, just above the white space now inscribed with the tale of my mystical experience:

“In the light of trust, as it develops slowly over time, you will find that you are a privileged child of the universe, entirely safe, entirely supported, entirely loved.”

Synchronicity. Just be it, just experience its beauty.
Jim Dee
bsuwg.blogspot.com
https://greenvanholzer.blogspot.com/

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