Welcome to The Mystical Underground

The other day our next door neighbor asked me if I wanted to split a pallet of sod. Both of our lawns had patches of dead grass and weeds and I quickly agreed. I began clearing out the old grass and prepping the ground for the new sod.

We were supposed to leave the next morning taking K’s trailer to Odom’s, a company that sells sod grown on the edge of the Florida Everglades. The next day came and went. I only saw  K once walking away talking on his cell. Two more days passed and on the second evening I spotted him in his backyard. K seemed distracted as I approached and before I said anything he muttered that we could get the sod in the morning.

K’s usually an early riser so I was surprised when I didn’t see him at eight the next morning. He came out at 9:30 and we drove off. I was a bit annoyed by the way he’d put off our plans without even saying anything about it. I just figured he was preoccupied with something.

By the time we reached Odom’s I found out what it was. The airline where he works as a pilot had filed for bankruptcy. As a result, he was taking a big pay cut, the second since 2003, and there was something else.

The company, like many large corporations, matched deposits in a 401K account. In other words, for every dollar that K saved in his pension plan, the company also put a dollar in the account. A good deal. The catch, though, was that if the company went belly up, employees might lose their entire pension. That’s exactly what happened, K confided as we waited for the sod.

Now I knew why he hadn’t been too concerned with our plans. He was expecting to retire with about $1 million in his pension fund. He’d just lost the entire thing.

I mentioned that, sadly, his story sounded like an increasingly typical American tale with middle class people taking the blows when companies were mismanaged. Meanwhile, the executives responsible for the collapse would escape with golden parachutes, maybe even handsome year-end bonuses.

It’s a synchronicity because this American tale involved a company named American Airlines.

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PS Are we looking at the demise of the middle class? It certainly seems that way. Today, the U.S. senate rejected a bill that would extend the payroll tax – FICA deductions (Social Security). It means that most Americans will be paying about $1,000 more in taxes while the one percent continues to benefits from the Bush tax cuts. Interestingly, it revealed that Republicans will raise taxes – in spite of their pledge – as long as the rich are spared.

Our friend Gabe Carson from Minneapolis sent us a synchro about pi, or π, which is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter.  Pi equal approximately to 3.14, but it’s decimal representation never ends and never repeats.

Gabe entered the mystery of pi while at work after a friend sent him a Facebook image of a musician wearing a Pi t-shirt. She asked him if he thought the t-shirt was from an xkcd comic.

So Gabe Googled xkcd pi and found a comic about pi by xkcd, but not the one referenced on the t-shirt.

He chuckled at the comic, and suddenly thought about the web site for ‘Dinosaur Comics,’ which he hadn’t visited in months. So he Googled “dinosaur comics,” and clicked through to the homepage. He came to the current comic and was astonished to see that it was about pi. Beyond that synchro, the comic also implies what pi may reveal about the universe.

A little more researching and Gabe discovered the comic that is on the t-shirt. The graphic image itself reveals another synchronicity–amirror image of pi or I should say ‘pie.’ Enjoy.

Right outside the window of my home office stands a huge ficus tree. It’s trunk is so thick that it would take three, maybe four adults, to wrap their arms around it. So I have a room with a view of a tree. Until recently, it never occurred to me that the tree, likewise, has a view of me sitting at my desk.

It’s branches shoot up 50 feet or more and spread horizontally over the yard on that side of the house. Every year or so, the branches start hanging over the roof and that can allow insects access to the roof or create potential storm hazard. When Hurricane Wilma hit us a few years back, our roof was covered with huge ficus branches.

So recently it was time for me to get out the ladder and chain saw and cut back on some of those lower hanging branches. I leaned the ladder firmly against the tree, but it wobbled as I neared the top of it. I didn’t want to call Trish to hold it while I felled branches above her, so I climbed up into the large limbs and went to work.

After struggling with the chainsaw and finding it difficult to cut the smaller branches with it,  I retreated and switched to a machete. Surprisingly, it was far more effective in cutting both small and medium-sized branches that the chain saw.

I cleared away the branches I’d cut and saw that I still had a few more to trim, but I ended up putting it off for a couple of weeks. So a few days ago, I raised the ladder again to tackle the task. But to my surprise I was unable to find the machete. I usually keep it wedged in one side of my workbench, but it was nowhere to be found.

I thought that possibly I’d left it in the tree or on the ground and it was buried in leaves. I checked the tree and raked the leaves. No machete. A couple of days passed in which I made several more fruitless searches. Finally, I walked out to the tree, looked around for the umpteenth time, then turned to the tree.

“Look,” I said, “I’m not trying to cut you down. All I want to do is trim your branches. So where’s the machete?” I stood there a moment longer, then turned toward the house and miraculously there it was! The blade, partially covered in leaves, was sticking out from behind an old windsurfer that lay against the house.

I picked it up and turned in astonishment to the tree. I really felt as if the big ficus had somehow communicated with me. “I’ll talk to you more often,” I said, and walked away, machete in hand.