Magic

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Trish and Rob

from Jung’s Red Book

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While Rob and Megan were in Minneapolis visiting his family, Nancy Pickard flew in for a visit from Kansas. Yes, it’s like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz dropping by, except that the lions and scarecrows and tin men on this visit aren’t separate beings. They are us.

I met Nancy in 1985, I think it was, at the first book signing I ever did, for my first novel. She was two novels ahead of me. She and her former husband used to spend part of their winters in Fort Lauderdale, where we lived at the time, so we saw each other frequently. Over the years, we moved, Megan was born, she got divorced, and we both kept on writing. When we got together, our discussions were always bottom line – metaphysics, the hows and whys of writing, and usually, a bunch of synchronicities.  This visit was no different.

The synchros started when we went to the dog park. The only other human of our usual dog group at the park today was Colleen, who lived in Kansas for two years. Nancy knew the town, questioned Colleen about it, and Colleen talked at great length about how much fun she’d had there, how great this town was after where she had lived in Michigan. As we were leaving the park, Nancy murmured, “Synchronicity!”

“Really? How?”

“That town? It’s where my next novel is located.  It’s a nothing little  town in southern Kansas and the way she described it explained exactly what I need to know for this book.”

What are the odds?

Later that evening, we went up to a favorite coffee spot that was celebrating its first anniversary with free food. Nancy was telling me about the week she spent at Antioch College, teaching at a writers’ workshop. Her focus was first paragraphs and first pages in novels and she used classics as her examples. Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Dickens. In each instance, the first paragraph or first page encompassed absolutes or contrasts that used words like first, last, best, worst, alive, dead…well, you get the idea.

And I suddenly realized that I although I had set up the absolutes/contrasts in the novel I’m working on, the third in the Esperanza series, I didn’t address it in the first graph or first page. And with that realization, I suddenly knew who my protagonist should be. I suddenly knew whose story this is. This point of view thing in a novel is so critical to how the story unfolds that unless you have it right from the get go, the book won’t work.

Think of Harry Potter. It has one perspective through all the books – Harry. We get to know the other characters, but it’s his story.

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ brilliant trilogy, sticks to one perspective – that of Katniss, the female protagonist, and the stakes in this story are life or death.

In The Great Gatsby, probably F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best novel,  all the decadence and strangeness of the jazz age of the 1920s is captured through the eyes of Gatsby himself in the opening paragraphs.

Don’t take my word for it. Do what Nancy and I did. Start pulling your favorite novels off the shelves. Read the first paragraph or the first page. What are the stakes? The contrasts? The absolutes? Which words are used?

A novel, of course, is more than just an opening paragraph or first page. The author has to carry the idea and the characters through to the end. And the ending is just as important as the beginning.  It’s probably why author Jerzy Kosinski (The Painted Bird) used to write his endings first.

When Nancy finished her teaching at Antioch, she got a standing ovation, the first time that had ever happened in the history of this particular writers’ workshop. “One of those magical moments,” she said.

Ha, I thought.  It’s because she left-brained something that all novelists should keep in mind: give the browser who picks up your book a reason to buy it. Give them magic.

 

Posted in n pickard, synchronicity | 14 Comments

Before You Hit the Road

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This story comes from our friend, Melissa. She used to live down the street from us and babysat Megan on a few occasions. She now lives in NY with her husband, Jon, and has been jotting down her synchros. This one is related to travel – not the actual journey, but the preparations you make before you leave.

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On Wednesday, August 24…we were getting ready to fly out to LA that afternoon for our vacation.  I needed to print a couple of things for work before I left, so I proceeded.

My printer was giving me difficulty and then ended up needing an ink cartridge replacement — it was really out.  Usually I can tell it to print just black and keep going, this day the machine was just not having it.  When I reached into the box on the shelf that holds all the ink, I found the tickets to the Serge Gainsbourg tribute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Gainsbourg concert at the Hollywood Bowl we were planning on attending in the very box.  We would have left without them otherwise.

I think that was a synchro, even if I had no idea! The universe really wanted us to go to that show — we saw lots of people (famous) just hanging out and my new favorite actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actually performed.

Posted in synchronicity, travel | 9 Comments

Darth Vader and Dick Cheney

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Trish and Rob

One recent morning, Rob asked if I had read Maureen Dawd’s column abut Dick Cheney’s new book. When I said I hadn’t, he said, “Read it. The only believable part is at the end.”

I hadn’t had my coffee yet or even a bite of breakfast and frankly didn’t know if I could muster the courage to wade through any column about Cheney and his new memoir, In My Times.

In my mind, Cheney remains a Darth Vader, a man who actually ran the country for eight years and nearly drove the U.S. into oblivion. He was the guy who backed torture  (enhanced interrogation, Cheney called it) the invasion of Iraq, and the outing of  CIA agent Valerie Plame. And that’s just for starters. For all we know, he may have written George Bush’s speeches, in particular the ones about mushroom clouds and Armageddon and be afraid, be very afraid. About midway through the Bush years, I couldn’t even look at Cheney without feeling the urge to vomit.

Darth Vader, if you recall, wore that weird black helmet so that he could breathe. When stripped of that helmet, he looked like the pathetic, dying man he was, who could merely gasp for breath. Cheney, it turns out, is a man without a pulse.

In July of this year, he had heart surgery to implant a mechanical pump known as a ventricular assist device. It’s used in a small, but growing number of people whose heart failure is so severe that they would die in a few months without it. In other words, Cheney was at the heart failure stage where he was severely short of breath, could only walk a few steps, or was confined to a chair or bed for most of a given day. The pump doesn’t mimic the heart’s beat. There’s no beat at all.

I found a curious synchronicity in Cheney’s end of life surgery. A man who claims he would order torture again, who takes no responsibility for anything he did during his eight years as VP, who is responsible for the destruction of thousands of lives in Iraq, who lied to Colin Powell about WMDs in Iraq, who outed a CIA agent, has no pulse. No heart.  Interesting symbolism, right?

The second synchro is this: during the weeks that Cheney, apparently in a coma,  recuperated from his heart pump surgery, he claims he had a “prolonged dream” that he was in a villa in Italy. “It was in the countryside, a little north of Rome, and it really seemed I was there,” he wrote. “I can still describe the villa where I passed the time, the little stone paths I walked to get coffee or a batch of papers.”

That was the part Rob found believable. Me, too. His description has all the hallmarks of a near-death experience.

“So it must mean the universe forgave Cheney,” Rob remarked after I had read Dawd’s column and burst out laughing. “The guy was in an Italian villa, sipping cappuccinos every day.”

“Either it’s forgiveness or it’s all bullshit,” I replied.

“You think Cheney’s lying about that villa stuff?”

“No.  I mean, maybe what we believe is all wrong, that it’s all  BS, there’s no afterlife, no karma, no accountability, that Cheney and Bush and Wolfowitz and all the rest of them will be joining Cheney in the afterlife, in his Italian villa to drink cappuccinos and plan their next assault on freedom and truth.”

I run into this wall from time to time and promptly call Carol Bowman, for a reality check. Carol is the author of two books on reincarnation and a past-life therapist who has regressed thousands of people.  She’s convinced we live many lives, that we bring issues for one life into another, that we’re here to resolve and move forward.

But really, the bottom line is that we don’t know. Yes, there are signs, and it may be that synchronicity is the language of  this particular terrain. It may be the best language we have at this time and place, at this juncture between what is and what is to come. But is it incontrovertible scientific proof? Well, maybe.

In the meantime, as Maureen Dawd says, think about “Caesar and his cappuccino.”

Or, as Carol Bowman says, Believe.

 

Posted in cheney, past lives, synchronicity | 42 Comments

The Nature of Consciousness

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This documentary is part 1 of a planned 3 part film on the nature of consciousness. This segment is just under 16 minutes long and well worth a look! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrKVQVr3p04&feature=player_embedded

 

Posted in synchronicity | 22 Comments

Synchros as Confirmations

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Old Town in Esperanza, Ecuador

This post is about the synchronicity of dates – as confirmation.

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In Esperanza, there’s a character named Wayra – Quechua for wind – who’s a shape shifter, the last of his kind. We meet him first as a black lab.  He has a long and convoluted history with Dominica, the ghost whose tribe terrorizes Esperanza.

In Ghost Key, the sequel, he’s pursuing Dominica, who has seized a young woman and the niece of the protagonist in the first book, and has fled Ecuador. In this book, Wayra learns he isn’t the last of his kind,  that there were seven tribes of shifters that originated in the “land of the twin suns.”  A man and a teenager are badly injured in the story and the only way Wayra can save them is to turn them into shifters so that the properties of shifter blood will heal them. He then turns the teenager’s mother so that the boy will never be alone, as Wayra was for so many centuries.

In the third book, The Twin Suns, the story opens with Wayra training his three new shifters in the particular skills and talents that shifters have – the healing properties of shifter blood, the shifter longevity, the skill to track anything, anywhere, and the ability to move through time. Everything he knows about being a shifter he had to learn on his own because the man who turned him took off and Wayra never saw him again.

Of these skills, time travel is the most problematic – and the most difficult to master. It took Wayra centuries.  He hopes his protégés can master it in decades. So he’s explaining how the time travel thing works and the teenager, Rocky, says he’s chosen a spot in time – Woodstock. He wants to see Jimi Hendrix performing at Woodstock.  Wayra asked Rocky for the date.

At that point, I had to Google it to make sure about the dates. I was writing this scene late  on the night of August 18. So I end up at Wikipedia and discover that Hendrix was scheduled to perform at Woodstock on August 18, 1969.  Wow, I thought, 42 years ago today. Synchro! I figured it meant I was on track with this story. Then I read on and discovered that due to weather and technical difficulties, Hendrix actually played on the morning of August 19.  I felt sort of deflated until I glanced at the time on my computer: 1:22, August 19. It turned out to be a synchronicity, after all.

 

 

Posted in creativity, esperanza, synchronicity | 12 Comments

The Elenin Synchros

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Trish and Rob

If you Google the word Elenin, you will get 4,700,000 hits. So this makes it 4,700,001. We weren’t going to join the hype about Comet Elenin, but events have dragged us into it.

First, if you haven’t heard, Elenin is a comet that was discovered last December by an amateur Russian astronomer. It will pass close by the Earth (if you consider 22 million miles close!) later this month.  Much of the talk on the Internet has been fear-based, suggesting that the comet is actually Planet X or Nibiru and will destroy Earth.

It wasn’t until this summer that I tuned into the Earth-throttling comet attack scenario. I first heard about it third-hand from a Homeland Security agent who was moving to a remote mountain location and buying an ATV to reach his hideout. Megan told me this story shortly after a friend sold that ATV to the agent.

We had been talking about it in an airport in the Northlands and were standing in line at a Caribou Coffee stand when Megan pointed to a chalkboard. “Dad, look at that!” It was the question of the day, written on a chalkboard: “Ten percent off if you can spell the name of the comet approaching Earth this fall.” Megan said: “I know how to spell it.”

After that I started hearing more and more about Elenin and even receiving videos through e-mail. (Thank you, Jane C.) One such video featured a dry professorial type who claimed that Elenin could be as large as Jupiter and will pass between Earth and Venus. That would be quite a sight! However, astronomers say that in all likelihood, the comet will be barely visible without a telescope.

What I found interesting about that video is that the narrator seemed to favor the idea that Elenin is the Blue Star Kachina of Hopi prophecies. (That starts about minute 7 on the video.) In that prophecy, a Blue Star Kachina will dance in the plaza of Oraibi when a blue star appears in the heavens, a star that will signal the end of the Fourth World – the world as we know it – and bring in the Fifth World in the aftermath of massive chaos and turmoil, and who knows what.

The Hopi confluence, for me, was a synchro of a personal order. Elenin supposedly will pass by Earth in late September, and a few days later, Oct. 1, my novel TIME CATCHER, will be published. The cover above shows the blue star of the prophecy, which plays a major role in the story….Well timed, if Elenin is the blue star.

But then Richard Hoagland has another take.  Hoagland is a former museum space science curator, former NASA consultant and one-time science advisor to CBS News. The introduction to a length interview with him on Red Ice Radio says, “Hoagland weaves together an intense eye-opener which connects Comet Elenin with September 11, the original masonic message, the bombing in Norway and the secret space program.”

Hoagland believes that Elenin no ordinary comet, but an intelligently-guided, artificially-constructed object sent our way to raise our consciousness. In other words, rather than a destroyer, Elenin is a good guy. He goes on at length about the ‘fear porn’ coming out about the comet and explorers the reasons for the disinformation.

Early in the interview he notes a synchronicity: Leonid Elenin discovered the comet, given his namesake, by searching the skies around the constellation Leo. In other words, Leo discovered Elenin in Leo. Hoagland finds that meaningful.

Could it be that the underlying message of Elenin and the related hype is that disclosure is near? What will it mean that we are not alone in the Universe, that THEY are already here among us?Possibly a shift of consciousness as Hoagland sees coming in the Elenin ‘mothership.’

Then again, as many previous comets, it might pass by with little notice and no great revelations.

Posted in synchronicity | 16 Comments

The Glow in Bejing

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Trish and Rob

A rather strange anomaly. This glow in Bejing lasted for 20 minutes. Would that happen with the remnants of a satellite?

And just for some perspective, here’s an interesting speech from a former head of the FAA about a sighting in 1986, by a pilot of Japanese Airlines Flight 1628:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P51LmirTJI8&feature=player_embedded

 

Posted in synchronicity, UFO | 5 Comments

‘Aliens’ discovered in crop circle

Posted on September 3, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Even though this story is two years old, it was news to us, probably because the American press typically doesn’t cover crop circle stories. The Telegraph of the UK, however, apparently does report on crop circles, grouping them in the category of the odd and unusual. In this story, a police officer decided to investigate some unusual activity inside a crop circle.

The officer, who isn’t named in the article,  spotted three men all blond, over six-feet tall and wearing  the same white outfits.  At first he thought they were forensic officers, stopped his car, and approached the field. As he moved closer to the crop circle, he heard a crackling sound like electric static and saw the crops moving gently back and forth.

According to crop circle researcher Andrew Russell, ”He shouted to the figures who, at first, ignored him, not glancing at him. When he tried to enter the field, they looked up and began running.

He said they ran faster than any man he has ever seen. “I’m no slouch but they were moving so fast. I looked away for a second and when I looked back they were gone.’I then got scared. The noise was still around, but I got an uneasy feeling and headed for the car. For the rest of the day I had a pounding headache I couldn’t shift.”

We found mention of this story in the last chapter of  The Source Field Investigations, by David Wilcox.  Then we found it on the Internet in the Telegraph’s archives.

The crop circle photo is one we came across when searching for an image. But it probably isn’t the one referred to in the story. We like it, though!

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 19 Comments

September Highlights

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Our editor asked us to start a Sydney Omarr blog, so we’re cross-posting here.

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The full moon this month falls on September 12, in Pisces, a water sign.

The moon symbolizes our inner lives, our emotions, our capacity to nurture others and self, and it usually represents your nurturing parent. Full moons typically signal a culmination point, a harvest, a completion of something. With this moon in Pisces, certain qualities are emphasized: imagination, intuition, dreams, indecision. Your head wants to do one thing, your heart another.

Jupiter, the planet of expansion and luck, forms a wide, beneficial angle to this moon. The indication is that whatever you feel may be greatly exaggerated by the moon’s contact with Jupiter. Instead of waking up feeling good, you wake up feeling ecstatic, so it’s a great time to do some visualization and back it with powerful emotion.

Mars, symbolic of our aggression and ambition, sexuality and physicality, is in water sign Cancer and also forms a beneficial angle to this moon. This angle may indicate a lot of emotional activity that drives you forward during the day.  Hmm: drama? There could be plenty of that. You or people around you may be acting out. Shrug it off. This, too, shall pass.

Water signs – Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio – will be most affected by this full moon. However, we all have Pisces somewhere in our natal charts,  so be sure to check your chart to see where Pisces falls.If it’s on the cusp of your second house, for instance, then your financial area will feel the impact. Earth signs will be impacted as well – Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, and in a positive way. However, Pisces is opposed to Virgo, so it could be a bit of a dicey days for Virgos. On the other hand, it may be just what you Virgos need, a dreamy day to kick back and chill.

Some other dates to note for this month:

September 3 could be one of the luckiest days all year. Jupiter and the sun are in cahoots and that means expansion and good things for all of us. Even though Jupiter is retrograde for the entire month, it’s not as big a deal as Mercury retrograde. For Virgos in particular and earth and water signs generally, you’ll enjoy this day immensely.

September 16 features a change in signs for Venus, symbolic of love and romance, money, the finger things in life! It moves from Virgo to Libra, which benefits air signs – Gemini, Libra, Aquarius – and fire signs – Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. It remains there till October 9. So, all you air and fire signs, love the one you’re with and be with the one you love.

On September 17, Pluto turns direct in Capricorn after many months of being retrograde. Pluto rules water sign Scorpio, so for you folks, that’s good news. Well, it’s actually good news for all of us.  Things really drag when Pluto isn’t functioning at optimal capacity. Maybe the politicians will finally get their acts together and pass legislation that actually helps, you know, we the people.

That trickster, Mercury, which rules communication, travel, your conscious mind,occupies three signs this month. It’s now moving in direct motion, a relief, and when it changes signs, our communication skills also change.  It begins the month in fire sign Leo, so you may be communicating in a more flamboyant fashion. On September 9, Mercury enters Virgo. This transit suggests a more discerning, intellectual approach in your communications. Details are important. You may be more health conscious. On September 25, Mercury enters Libra, a more gregarious, people-oriented sign. Your communications take on a lighter approach, you network more.

Mars enters Leo on September 18, a transit all you fire signs and air signs will enjoy. You’ll feel energized physically, enthusiastic about whatever you’re involved in, and will be ready to strut your stuff.

We’ll cover the new moon in Libra on September 27 in a separate post. That’s going to be a rock ‘n rolling day!

 

 

 


Posted in synchronicity | 7 Comments

Dog Park Drama

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Noah and his karmic buddy Cody

 

When Rob and Megan left  to visit his family in Minneapolis. Noah was feeling down in the dumps because his primary human had left (I’m a distant second in the Noah scheme of things), so I decided that if the weather cooperated, I would take him to the dog park early today. Around five that day, it was cloudy and marginally cooler (93) and the air smelled of rain. I hoped for a synchro and brought along a book, figuring the park would be empty. It wasn’t.

Cody’s human, Karin, had already arrived and set up the doggie tarp pool. Several other women were also there whose names I don’t know. But I could pick their dogs out of a police lineup – Thunder and Bruno, big, gentle boys; Lou and Bru, a pair of Dobermans who are major Frisbee players; Lily, a playful black lab; an Obama pooch (non allergenic) who is on meds for epileptic seizures; and then Mia and Bandit, a Husky and Corgi who belong to Rob’s private yoga student, Diana.

This group typically congregates around the dog pool, in the middle park (there are four adjoining parks for various sizes of dogs). Another group of dogs and their humans occupy a vastly shady area  on the far side of the other large dog park. In this group are some lazy collies and a couple of smaller dogs. Of these dogs, I know Mikey – a busy little terrier who enjoys humans, greets the people who know his name, but who generally spends about two hours crisscrossing the park with his nose to the ground. He wants to play with other dogs, enjoys chasing and being chased, but every time he starts doing this, his human – let’s call her Dot – calls him on it, her voice echoing across the park like the shrill cry of a banshee.

“Mikey, Mikey, get over here!”

Several days ago, Mikey trotted over to our group to greet everyone, and suddenly a man came hurrying after him, shouting his name, with Dot hurrying along behind him. Karin remarked, “Mikey likes our side of the park.”

Dot gave Karin the strangest, coldest look, and sniped, “Yeah, he likes hanging out with the lower class.”

Karin and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Did she really say that?” I asked.

It turned out that Karin and Dot had arrived at the park at the same time that day and Dot  told Karin that Cody should be banned from the park. “He plays too roughly.”

Karin,  a non-confrontational woman,  simply shrugged. “That’s how dogs play.”

Dot  is odd. She always wears a hat, long sleeved shirts  and long pants – even when it’s 101 out – and carries a bag that contains who knows what. Dot never says hello to anyone except the people she sits with on the far side of the park. Even if you greet her, she pretends she hasn’t heard you. She never picks up Mikey’s poop.

It started raining about half an hour after I arrived and we all moved under shelters. The people on the far side of the park moved with their dogs into the area where we were huddled. The rain didn’t last long and we returned to our benches and  the dogs went about their business. Suddenly, several of us saw Cody chasing Mikey and saw Dot whip out her insect repellent and spray it into  Cody’s eyes.

It’s the kind of abuse that riles people, that riled me, that prompted Karin to shoot to her feet. “That does it,” Karin snapped. “She did this once the other day and I didn’t confront her yesterday, but now I’ve had it.” She headed for Dot, with the Doberman’s human and I hurrying along to support her.

Dot was already on her cell, talking to 911, rambling on about how a woman half her age (Karin’s 54, which would put Dot at 108 – slight exaggeration) and twice her size was in her face, harassing her. Karin and I and the Doberman human exploded with laughter. Dot rambled on like this for several minutes and then hurried over to her clutch of buddies for “protection.”

Someone washed out Cody’ eyes while this was going on, we stuck around longer than usual so Karin would have witnesses, and the police eventually arrived – two undercover drug cops. Dot hurried out to greet them, to get in her side of the story. The rest of us waited in our area.  These two young, tough-looking guys finally made their way to us.

Shift change. That’s why we had armed undercover drug boys instead of, well, dog park boys. They basically said that Dot has some screws loose, they told her to forget the bug spray, and that if it happened again, Karin could call Animal Care and Control and file a complaint.  “But the real problem,” says one cop,” is that this dog park is nicer than most kid day care centers. If the cops get too many complaints, the city may just decide to close the park.”

The synchro here is that I’m writing about shape shifters – humans who have been turned into dog/wolf shifters.  In this particular story, the species is violent. What I discovered, though, is that the dog part of this equation is willing to live and let live. It’s the humans who go for the jugular.

I may have to alter the particulars of my plot line.

 

 

Posted in noah, synchronicity | 10 Comments