A wise man named
Robert Moss once said Life Rhymes. Saying it this way makes him sound ancient. While he would agree he is "Stone Age, not New Age," he is definitely very current. He may know a great deal about ancient history, and he certainly has access to ancient wisdom, but he is very much alive and is probably beating
his drum this very minute. Well, actually, he probably just watched the season finale of Warehouse 13 on SyFy and is now brushing his teeth. Whatever shamans do on a Tuesday night.
So, on page 2 of
The Three 'Only' Things Robert says, "The play of coincidence is all around us, and if we will only look, it will teach us that our thoughts and feelings literally generate different events and experiences in the world 'out there.' We can then begin to work consciously with the law of attraction." Being a person who loves playing around with The Secret and manifesting really important stuff, like, you know, karaoke machines and coffee, I pay lots of attention to attraction. In fact, the parking spots that open themselves up for Cesar are only for fun, a side dish to my main course: the endless series of happy accidents and feng shui flow that is my waking life.
Robert insists that living this way is just the way to live, in waking life and dream life. Which may be real life. We can and should all be doing this, all the time, and I agree with him. Now, if you think I'm spending too much time and attention quoting some guy named Robert, let me explain this: If you had an opportunity to learn dreamwork from an eminent dream expert and master storyteller, wouldn't you? If you had the opportunity to travel into your own past and future, and into other people's dreams, and to re-ignite your imagination, and live your life like it is one pleasant, amazing dream every day, wouldn't you? And if you could listen to a
sexy Australian rattle on about his encounter with ancient Mohawk peoples, wouldn't you? No? Well, you're crazy.
What? I'm crazy?
Good.
Moving on. My original intention of this blog entry was to tell a few coincidence stories. Here goes:
Tonight I got a chair massage. No, not a
dance, a massage. No, not that kind of massage. I have knots in my back, which I've never had before, and Michael, my masseur (just wanted to say that), said it's years of pent-up tension in my trapezius, compounded by some sort of repeated strain, like typing on a laptop, which he says I should have at eye level, but that's impossible for me because I never took keyboarding and thus have to look at the keys to type, meaning I have the laptop down low no matter what because I can't have it at eye level and the keyboard down low, because I have to look at the keyboard, and the screen is, you know, attached.
Now I'm sounding really crazy. Even better.
So, just as I'm leaving the massage place, I see a book for sale and I stop to flip through it. It includes a zillion quotes about love and peace and soul and happiness, a typical spa-setting-style book. When that many quotes are collected together they confound me and I have quotation shut-down, so I set the book back down. Just before I did, I looked at the inscription on the inside cover: another quote, of course. Emily Dickenson. I thought, this better be a really good one, not some gazing-out-the-window melancholy, to be the inside cover quote of a book of quotes. It WAS a good quote. In fact, so good and so surprising, I made a mental note, as I am practicing mental notes in lieu of my usual written post-it notes, to look it up at home.
So, when I got home I got Ebby's birthday present ready. A small book of quotes. Dammit. And a little pouch I found in Nepal. For, you know, whatever men put in pouches. And a little magical rock Joel brought me from a lady in Jordan who has her own little magical shop and made me a little magical...pouch. Of beads and rocks and bits of tulle and jewels, as if she knows all my favorite things. So I put one of these favorite things in Ebby's gift and tied it all with a bow. Good thing Ebby goes to bed at a teacherly hour so he won't read this until I give him his quote book and pouch, since I will see him tomorrow for his birthday. So, I had retrieved the rock from the Jordan pouch in the top drawer of the pink nightstand with the marble top. And as I went to shut that drawer I saw a scrap of paper, not a post-it but a red square of paper sans sticky, and it had an Einstein quote on it, perfect for Ebby's gift card: "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives." So, I pulled the paper from the small stack of quotes copied out of SARK's
Eat Mangoes Naked, and flipping it over to the back, I found another quote, written months ago, one I had enjoyed only hours earlier and was open-mouth delighted to find, in my own hand, copied on the back, by Emily Dickenson:
"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."
That was one for me for sure.
Damn, my trapezius aches. But I shall endure it to tell another Ebby serendipity story, which I tried to tell him the other night right after it happened, when I was still giddy laughing about it, when my soul was ajar, but he doesn't answer his phone when I call, so he'll just have to read it here, won't he? Michael! I need my knots rubbed.
Julie arrived from Chicago Friday afternoon. Always happy to make the scenic drive to and from Reagan National, I enjoyed the route along the Potomac. Saturday morning, I enjoyed my VERY favorite route across the Roosevelt Bridge to E Street, passing my beloved Kennedy Center. After dropping Julie off at 18th and L, I spoke to Joel on the phone and drove to Ebby's place at 14th and S.
Ebby and I had a delicious walk, stopping for coffee and chatting about his upcoming field trip to the
Masonic Temple, not the Alexandria one but the D.C. Scottish Rite one, the scene of some exciting drama in
The Lost Symbol, which he recommended to me and read with his high schoolers, where he and his students would be visiting and tracking the events of the novel. Halfway through our walk, I needed to pee, especially after laughing about the bra on the ground in the middle of the day outside Rumors, so Ebby suggested Corner Bakery as a good bathroom location. He was right, it was way better than Starbucks, their bathrooms always baffling me. Starbucks and McDonalds. I understand that they have high traffic from patrons and otherwise, but being the giants they are, they could at least thank their loyal..fans? by cleaning the damn bathroom occasionally. Spotless, actually. Most income = best bathrooms.
As we walk away from Corner Bakery, we hear a man yelling at another man who seems to be sitting down in the outdoor seating area of Au Bon Pain. Why, I wonder aloud, is that man yelling at that poor guy with his briefcase? In my mind I immediately think this yelling guy is a jerk. Moments later, I put all the pieces together: No one else is sitting outside at Au Bon Pain because the furniture is wet with fresh silver spray paint. The "jerk" is actually an observant, kind soul jumping at the chance to exclaim to a stranger setting his leather briefcase down, "Wet Paint!" ASS out of U and ME for sure.
On the way back to Ebby's we pass...the Scottish Rite. Which is about one block from his house.
I drive home from D.C. and am shortly thereafter picked up by Ebby, who drives the two of us to Ballston Mall. Not my favorite place to be, but I keep finding myself here. I leave the bar to get my first massage, the day I met Michael. You know, my
masseur. Then Shari and I meet Ebby in D.C. again. So, not having seen him in about 3 years, I now see Ebby 3 times in one day. I know, these were intentional plans, not coincidence, but it felt like a play, an Act in three scenes. So, Shari and I drive across...the Roosevelt Bridge. To E St. To 14th and S. Past the Scottish Rite.
Sunday morning, after a long night out in Adams Morgan, I drive into D.C. Again. Across the...yeah. To 18th and L. Numerous black secret service vehicles line the back drive to Julie's hotel, and I find myself walking through a gauntlet of cute agents in black suits to get to the other side of the hotel. I don't know who was brunching at the Mayflower, and I hope it was First Lady Obama and not some boring senator, but it's always fun to see secret service. One would think the suits attract more attention, not less trouble. Anyway, I did not cause trouble, although I wanted to, just to see what would happen if I started acting suspicious, like rummaging through my purse frantically or wearing dark sunglasses indoors or pretending to take photos with my watch. Especially suspicious as no one wears a watch. If I took a photo with my cell phone that would not be suspicious at all, just annoying. I was also wearing a DMB shirt. Very un-spy-like. But wouldn't
that be a good cover.
Julie and her friend Adrienne and I walk down the street to get breakfast. Julie says, "The concierge told me there is a Corner Bakery just up this way." A bit slow to connect, what with the Kracken Kritter rum and G&Ts last night, it takes me a block or two to say, "Huh. I think I have been to this Corner Bakery. One other time in my life, in the nine years I have lived here. To pee. Yesterday." Four quadrants in D.C., 68 zillion corners, and Julie wants to eat at my pee spot.
When we get there the cupboard is bare and so the poor girls have none. Apparently the folks at Corner Bakery and Chik-Fil-A of "My Pleasure" fame are in cahoots with their LDS closed-Sunday baloney. So, Julie suggests we cross the street and go to...wait for it, wait for it...Au Bon Pain. The wet paint signs are still out. Not a damn soul in this town is out eating brunch. Except maybe Erica and
DCBC across town, and I regret not signing up for a fun meal out to show Jules that D.C. is cool. If she were home in Chicago, brunch capital of the world, she'd be waiting 47 minutes for a table at M Henry, but here in downtown D.C. we can't find an open cafe. Sometimes I wonder about the pulse of this city. Is it beating? We get our food and sit outside. I forget about the wet paint. Did I mention my hangover? We did not get paint on our butts, thank goodness because Julie had cute jeans on. I was hoping for some sort of Issac Newton bird-poop-on-my-head aha-moment sitting outside in Wet Paint land, but nothing came to me. Except the idea to tell Ebby about this story. So that's something, because now I'm typing this. So that's definitely something.
Finally, I drive Julie and Adrienne to Reagan National. My scenic route. And I think about the weekend and how it consisted primarily of driving around and walking around and seeing and doing the same things many times and how natural it all felt. Like this is the way life should feel, like a silly, funny dream. And I haven't even talked about picking Jill up and how we ate pizza and drank beer in the RV. Just like we used to eat pizza and drink beer in the dorm. And how Julie saw Morgan for the first time in forever and he remembered all kinds of crazy stuff, and Joel and I talked about Mike and how he always remembers crazy stuff...
So, this is all my mental note about coincidences, just in the last few days. Life rhymes. Our thoughts and feelings literally generate events. Thoughts have mass. Thoughts become things. I wonder what things we are making happen next? I have a few ideas, and a few more ideas, but I need to sleep now. So I can dream. Funny...both Robert Moss and The Lost Symbol say the same thing. And so do The Secret and The Celestine Prophecy and What the Bleep and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and The Matrix and Waking Life and Rumi and the Masonic mysteries and the Bible and the ancient Mohawks and Carl Sagan and feng shui...what a coincidence.
