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Disclosure. Other people have written about this far more eloquently, but I’ve been thinking about this ever since I read something about Obama possibly becoming the “disclosure president.”

So let’s pretend. Let’s pretend there’re a news conference where this actually happens. Let’s pretend this revelation occurs in the Rose Garden and that it’s pretty much like many of us have figured. Something WAS recovered at Roswell – or some nearby location – in 1947. Technology WAS exchanged with an alien race. Deals WERE struck. Disinformation HAS BEEN the primary method of keeping everything quiet because we, the people, would be totally freaked out if we knew the truth.

But here’s the thing. Popular culture – books, movies, You Tube videos, social media – have prepared us for this eventuality for years. From ET to The Visitors, from Independence Day and Men in Black to Childhood’s End and The Fifth Wave, from Communion to Missing Time, we the people have gotten the message and total freakout is unlikely.

According to a Newsweek article in September 2015, slightly more than fifty percent of Americans, Germans, and Brits believe we aren’t alone in the universe.

“The poll, conducted by the market-research company YouGov, found the Germans are most likely to believe, at 56 percent, followed by Americans and British, at 54 and 52 percent, respectively.”

So what kind of shock waves would this news trigger? It probably would depend on the evidence Obama has to back up his announcement. Is an alien standing next to him? Does he have convincing video? Photos? Documents? Has Obama gone rogue to make this announcement? Have the aliens created a spectacle in the sky, with hovering crafts?

Regardless, this would be a moment like the JFK or MLK assassinations, like 9-11, when everyone would remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. It would trigger a massive paradigm shift. Science would scramble to explain it. Religions probably would attribute it to divine intervention. Psychology would struggle to stick it in a niche of some kind. And Carl Jung would be turning over in his grave, anxious to update his ideas of what this might mean as an archetypal event.

The intriguing component of an event like this is that people who have had encounters, experienced abductions, seen UFOs, would feel validated. Experts would emerge, people eager to interpret it all and make sense of the information for the rest of us. Maybe mankind as a collective would be so swept up in the drama that war would end or perhaps the military would be galvanized to take on the new enemy.

The discourse in this year’s election season would undoubtedly include campaign promises about how to deal with the aliens. Trump would build a wall and ban them from the U.S. Clinton would ramp up the military and maybe attempt to open a negotiation. Sanders might tap one of them as his V.P.

Several years ago, Rob, Megan, and I were returning home from a dinner at a local restaurant and I pointed at the sunset sky and asked, If a UFO suddenly appeared, how would that change us?

 Silence in the car. Then Megan said, “It would depend on our belief system.”

And I think she was right. If you don’t believe in something, then it’s not on your radar, it hasn’t registered on your consciousness. So there might be a lot of people who wouldn’t see the evidence that Obama presents. But if there was tangible evidence – an alien standing next to him, crafts in the sky – then even non-believers would have to deal with it.

Beyond that, all sorts of scenarios are possible – chaos, disintegration, acceptance, new technology, new ideas about the nature of reality, resistance, more war, peace, a better world… You get the idea. The scenario that evolved would depend on our collective reaction to disclosure.

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Sometimes, synchros occur and it isn’t until later that I recognize them as clusters- synchronicities that concern the same thing and happen over a period of time. This cluster of four concerns names and is tied to our daughter’s move this past January. All four illustrate, I think, the way creativity enables us to tap into synchronicity – and to the future.

In late December of last year and early January this year, Megan started looking for a new place to live and found a great little house with a yard for her dog, Nika. The name of the street was Harwood.

Then her search for a roommate began and in late January, a wonderful young woman named Lauren moved in with her dog. Nika finally had a friend to play with and the two dogs got along as well as Megan and Lauren. But Lauren got pregnant and she and her boyfriend subsequently became engaged and wanted to live together.

Megan began her search again for a roommate and a woman named Alex moved in. Within a week, Alex decided she wanted to live alone, so the roommate search began once again. This time, Megan was contacted by an attorney, Nick, who was starting a new job in Orlando and needed a place to live fast. Megan had reservations about a male roommate, but when she met Nick, they clicked and a few days later, Alex moved out and Nick moved in with his dog. Another new friend for Nika!

Now here’s where these synchros come in. For the last several years, Rob has been finishing a novel called Tulpas, which is now with his agent. In the book there’s a character named Dr. Harwood. Way back in January when we learned the name of the street where Megan would be living, we were both struck by the oddity of the synchronicity. Harwood isn’t a name you hear very often. That was synchro #1.

In my novel, U R Mine, which I started in the fall of 2014 and is now with my agent, the protagonist’s name is Laurie. Eerily close to Lauren. Laurie is an animal communicator and helps out the detective in charge of the case – Nick – who was at one time an attorney. Those are synchros #2 and 3.

In March, when Lauren and Megan were still roommates, before any of us even knew about Alex, I started a new novel. The protagonist in this book? Yeah, you guessed it. Alex. After Alex the roommate broke lease and moved out, I changed the character’s name.

It does seem that through our creative endeavors – writing –  Rob and I have been tuning into Megan’s future in a rather odd, specific way.

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This is a curious topic that we’ve written about previously, but one that interests me because all of my life people have asked me where I’m from. Trish grew up in Venezuela, yet very few people ask where she’s from because she speaks without any noticeable Latin accent.

I didn’t originally gain an accent because I had moved from somewhere else where people spoke differently.  But, for whatever reason, my speech was somehow different…different enough that when I was in fourth grade I was sent to a speech therapist who visited our school every week. I remember the  nice woman who would try to tell me how to move my tongue when I talked.

After leaving Minnesota, the inquiries about my origin became more specific. It was usually…”Are you from Canada?” When I go back to Minnesota, it seems that everyone there speaks with an accent, even though I hadn’t noticed so much when I was living there. And still people there ask where I’m from.

I’ve never had surgery that somehow accounted for how the woman in the video and others gained their accents.  So I guess mine was a speech impediment. Trish still thinks I speak with accent, but she relates it to Minnesota-talk. ‘Ya, sure, doncha know, you betcha, aye?’ That’s an exaggeration. But sort of what I hear when I go back.

I heard about how the woman in the video awoke from surgery with a British accent from Connie Cannon, who offered three possible reasons for foreign accent syndrome. Apparently, there are about 100 cases of foreign accent syndrome.

Here are Connie’s thoughts…

“I’m wondering if, while deeply anesthetized, these folks experience one of three potential events: they either return to a former life lived in the country where the language is native, (one women who had surgery awakened with a permanent, strong Irish accent for which no one has any explanation….true in each of the 100 cases), or perhaps they have become hosts for a discarnate entity, (possession or spirit attachment), or, their soul “walked out” and a different soul “walked in”….a phenomenon extensively explored by Ruth Montgomery. (I’m not sure where my personal belief is concerning Walk-ins.)”

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Of course mainstream science doesn’t accept any of those possibilities, which are metaphysical in nature. But there seems to be no simple scientific explanation. It remains a mystery. Supposedly, there are also cases where the person speaks a different language, not just an accent. If that’s true, then the mystery is even deeper.

Do our animal buddies follow us throughout our lives, once a cat, then a dog, then a hamster or some wild bird that roosts in our backyard? This is one area where a past life regression probably won’t yield much information that you can check through Google. But I suspect there are clues here and there that may be telling.

We recently posted a piece about a kitten we’re fostering for our daughter until she finds a roommate who isn’t allergic to cats. I put the post on Facebook and our friend, Vivian Ortiz, remarked that the kitten might be a reborn Kali. Vivian is intuitive when it comes to animals and it got me thinking.

Kali was a dusky conure that graced our lives for five years, from 2000-2005. She was a lover, a cutie, smart and sassy, and we gave her a lot of freedom.

She spent most her days under a tree in our backyard, on top of her cage or perched in the tree she called home. Every evening, we brought her indoors, where she snuggled into her little house and slept until dawn.

Then in October 2005, Hurricane Wilma ripped through South Florida as a category 1. It stalled over Wellington, the eye was directly over us. When you’re in the eye of a hurricane, you can walk outside into sunlight and blue skies, so that’s what we did.   In addition to the destruction to our yard – trees down, plants ripped up, fence down, screens ripped away – the tree where Kali had spent her days had split down the middle. It was as if some giant had come in with a huge machete and just chopped it in half.

At the time, we didn’t see it as anything other than another piece of destruction.

As the storm started moving again, we hurried back inside and waited for the backside of the hurricane. It was worse than the front of the hurricane. But fortunately Wilma sped up and an hour later, was gone and had left a lot of devastation in her wake, including power lines. We didn’t have electricity for 10 days.

As we were cleaning up the yard and house in the aftermath of the storm, we moved Kali and her cage outside, close but not under her decimated tree. She got spooked by the sounds of the generators that we and most of our neighbors had started up and flew off. We ran after her but lost sight of her. We searched for her until dark, when a cold front moved in.

The next morning, Rob got up at dawn and went looking for her. He found her across the street, huddled under some leaves, and brought her home. She was obviously sick, but no vets were open. Nothing was open. She died that evening, when I was holding her against my chest, and we buried her under her tree. That tree, eleven years later, is huge and beautiful, completely healed.

Vivian had met Kali several times. She came with us on a number of our road trips and spent time on Vivian’s porch on Tybee Island, where she was fascinated by the salt marsh and its diverse wildlife.

I was bewildered initially by Vivian’s comment that the kitten might be Kali. But the more I’ve thought about it and observed the cat – how she plays, how she interacts fearlessly with our dog (which is at least a thousand times her size), with the other cats and with the people around her, I think Vivian may be onto something. The kitten doesn’t say, Hola or Hello or any of the other words Rob taught Kali, but there are times when there’s a look in her eyes that reminds me of Kali.

It’s a look that is curious but stately, playful and fun, knowing and wise. Kali, like the kitten, was Megan’s animal, but we inherited her. A friend on Facebook suggested, half-jokingly, that we should call her Sanders because of our support for Bernie. She responds to the name, so that’s who she is now. Sanders, who may be a reincarnated Kali. She’s now at Megan’s house, and has been renamed Piper, which really does fit her.

I sure wish she spoke English. I’m still hoping to hear Hola or Hello! But in lieu of spoken words, it’s her eyes that capture me, intrigue me, make me whisper, Hey, Kali, is that you?

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In 1984, Chris Cox, an editor at Ballantine Books, bought my first novel, In Shadow. He was the editor for my next ten books, was also a writer, and went to the Amazon and to Colombia with us when Rob and I led travel tours for writers through Avianca Airlines. He’s in that tiny picture at the top of the post, the guy at the far right. He was a complete original, funny and smart, adventurous and compassionate, and had a Virgo eye for detail, a valuable asset for an editor. I have always felt enormous gratitude to him for launching my career as a writer.

He died in 1990, one of the many young men of that time killed by AIDS. At his memorial service in New York, Susan Sarandon spoke movingly of her long-time friendship with Chris, which dated back before her first movie. I later was told by Chris’s friend and fellow editor, Cheryl, that Sarandon had paid for a private nurse for Chris during the final months of his illness.

I also spoke at that memorial service, remembering Chris’s sense of adventure on the trips he took with us. He was the first to suggest we get off the boat and traipse through the jungle, the first to board an inflatable raft at night that took us through a tributary, surrounded by a cacophony of jungle sounds. He was the first to eat the piranha we caught, the first to trade trinkets with the locals for a beautiful owl that we brought onto the boat and set free at the jungle camp where we stayed a couple of nights.

I had bought this wooden sculpture, the traveling man, on one of those trips and talked about how it exemplified Chris’s intrepid spirit.

After he died, I eventually lost touch with the people in his circle – Bob Wyatt, who was then editor –in-chief at Ballantine, and Iris Bass, who had been Chris’s wonderful assistant.

Periodically over the years, I “call” on Chris to get the publishing ball rolling. It goes something like this: Hey, you guys on the other side, can you help get stuff moving here? This group of publishing folks consists of Chris, our first agent Diane Cleaver, Kate Duffy, who was my editor at Kensington, and several writers. So, several days ago, en route to Orlando to celebrate Rob’s birthday, I called specifically on Chris and this time I added, Give me a sign that you received the message, ok?

Two days later, I received an email from the editor at Page Street who bought our book on precognition, Sensing the Future, which comes out in January 2017. Marissa said she loved the book and was sending it on to the copy editor. She then sent an introductory email to me and the copy editor. When I saw the copy editor’s name, Iris Bass, I thought no way it can be the same Iris. Then she emailed:

Thanks Marissa and hello Trish –

Not meaning to “weird you out,” Trish—esp. given the genre of this book—but we already know each other, sort of. I am the Iris Bass who was Chris Cox’s assistant 25+ years ago when you were writing mysteries for Ballantine. Not all that weird, actually; publishing is a surprisingly small world.

Publishing may be a small world, but it’s not that small and the odds impressed me. And I knew that Iris was the sign that Chris had received the message.Save

I found this on Whitley Strieber’s site. He believes it’s “interesting enough to post.”  It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0YTrd4v0Mc#t=28

Adele Aldridge just emailed us with a synchro related to this object. She is creating origami peace cranes for a coloring book she is creating. Here’s her current diagram for one of them:

Today’s Summer Solstice also features a full moon, known as the Honey Moon, which according to the Farmer’s Almanac hasn’t happened since 1948.

Make your wish list, folks, and when the solstice begins at 6:34 PM EDT, create a ritual of some sort with your wish list and release it to the universe.

Enjoy!

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You have to hand it to the ancient Greeks and their mythology. They knew their stuff. For every human flaw, for every psychological syndrome, they had a story.

Take Narcissus. This guy, the son of a river god and a nymph, was a hunter known for his physical beauty and for spurning those who loved him. His behavior attracted the attention of nemesis, who was supposedly the spirit of retribution for arrogance. She attracted Narcissus to a pool where he saw his own reflection and fell in love with it so completely that he stared at his reflection until he died.

Interestingly, since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, psychologists have been diagnosing this dude as a narcissist. Well, yes. That’s been obvious for years and ever since the Repubs  elevated him to the status of nominee, it’s gotten worse. Now he speaks endlessly about how the party should all shut up and just let him do his thing – i.,e, alienate everyone.

Personally, I’m fascinated with  Trump’s love affair with himself. It’s gross and twisted and endlessly entertaining. I imagine that nemesis is somewhere in the shadows, laughing her ass off. Keep it up, Trump, and we’ll be witnessing the demise of the party that thrust you onto center stage. I would like to be glib  here and make some snotty remark about how Trump doesn’t have a chance at becoming prez. But there may be just enough hate in this country – and Clinton may have so much political baggage – that psycho Trump is propelled into the White House.

Eight years of W Bush was BAD. Four years of Trump would be far worse. I hear  a province in Nova Scotia is inviting Americans to move there if our nightmare comes to pass. Yeah, it’s colder there than it is in South Florida, but a Trump presidency would be like living in the Arctic, isolated, scared, and alone. And belligerent, of course.

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On Friday, June 10, American singer and songwriter Christine Grimmie, 22, was shot and killed while signing autographs for fans after a concert in Orlando at The Plaza Live.

Early on the morning of Sunday, June 12, a gunman entered The Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando, mowed down 49 people and injured more than 50 others before he was shot and killed by police. It’s the worst mass killing in American history.

On Tuesday, June 14, a two-year-old boy, Lane, was visiting a resort at Disney with his parents, when he was snatched by an alligator and dragged into the water. His father wrestled with the gator in an attempt to save his son, but to no avail. The boy’s body was found yesterday, Wednesday, June 15.

In just five days, Orlando, which calls itself City Beautiful,  has been the site of three tragedies and all of them have made global news. So what is going on?

Cities, like families and communities, have a collective energy that is tested with tragedies like these. By all reports, Orlando’s residents are drawing together in powerful ways – through vigils, blood donations for the victims, prayer. Today, President Obama and VP Biden will meet with families of the victims, the first responders, the physicians and nurses who helped to save lives.

I think this piece  by an Orlando resident describes what we all hope will emerge from this mass killing – and from Obama’s visit.

Now take a look at the rainbow that appeared over the nightclub. The rainbow has been a symbol of gay pride since Harvey Milk. How’s that for a synchro?

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Jane Clifford’s son, Harry Keyworth, is an amazing musician with an original approach. So recently he told Jane that in his  teens that all record hits were written in the same 4 chords and that he would never use them and he hasn’t.

Jane replied that maybe he should reconsider write a hit song, and then write what you want afterwards. Then the next day she came across a You Tube video on Facebook in which the Australian comedy band, Axis of Awesome,  said the very same thing about the  4 chords, then went on to prove it as the video here shows.

And here’s a song by Harry with different chords and a different beat.