Category Archives: Synchronicities

Synchronicity: Spaces Between

I’ve collected synchronicities this week again for the Synchronicity Project I’m doing with Lauren Paredes in Portland, OR.

A synchronicity of importance was the recurring theme of the phrase “The Space Between”. I was so moved by a quote by F. David Peat in Pathways of Chance that I wrote it down in my journal: “The space between. It was an idea that could be applied in many areas, particularly to describe what happens when you look at art or read a work of literature. It is the space that lies between the observer and the observed; it is the space of the creative act that brings a poem or painting to life.” In Trish and Rob MacGregor’s book The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, they added “And it’s the space where synchronicities are born.” I started to think about this concept quite a bit. I think it’s a very spiritual philosophy. They say there has to be stillness before one can begin to hear the important messages of life. There needs to be observance before there is change.

My friend posted a picture he admired called “The Space Between.” It’s a photograph of a woman looking at a moving train. The exposure is long enough for us to see the farm house beyond the train cars, in the gap between each. If we stand still, let there be space while everything else moves, we can see past the distractions to the view beyond.

I read these words by Deborah Wood in Hotel Amerika. “It took some time, but we filled the empty space with badinage and sensed the compression within each moment.” It seems like sometimes there is an ocean of space between us and others. Is that our fault? Can we fill it?

Even the advertisement for the Black Label Lincoln MKX car on the back of a New Yorker magazine seemed to add some direction to my thoughts on this topic: “Ah yes, The Zone. You remember that place where you relax your body and mind just enough to shape those random little notions into something useful. You know: ideas.” Well, then I knew I was on a roll. I can only have creative ideas when I give myself space, and time.

I’ve written about this concept before—the liminality between word and art, the boundary lines that intersect and create new places of transition, portals into paradox and magical logic. I like to call it the sweet spot, the visual center of the Venn Diagram. For me, the Telepoem Booth is an intermediary space between word and art, touch and hearing, the present and the past.

Spiritually, I imagine this concept simultaneously as cosmic space and the inner womb. It infinitesimally expands and eternally internalizes. It’s the labyrinth maze, the eye of the storm, a vestibule, elevator, confessional booth and canyon. It’s meditation and prayer, channeling unworldly beings, speaking in tongues. It’s the body that listens to the clay to tell it which way to pull. It’s the finger and the thumb rubbing away the dust from the words. It’s the empty space between loved ones when one needs to find where the heart stands. It’s the cushion of love-filled air, and stillness needed to see the real picture beyond the obstructions.

The space between is time, love, non-attachment and threshold. The space between is not definable but it shimmers out of the corner of my eye. I try not to look too hard, but I know it is there and I let it be there. It’s not hollow, but a bursting space.

We filled the space with silent love.

We laid down our bodies as a bridge

for the other to clamber across the chasm.

We filled the space between us

And it was full                        —        it was bursting.

 

 

Synchronicities: Trickster Version

This is the first installment of a synchronicity project that Lauren Paredes from Portland, OR and I are undertaking. Lauren read my post “The Reason I Read: Or Seven Synchronicities I’ve Had With Books Recently”, tracked me down online and wrote a completely charming introductory email. “I completely agree with you about feeling like those moments are pieces of evidence that you’re on the right track – I truly believe that,” she said.

We decided to do some research on the phenomena, pay attention to it happening in our own lives and share the pieces of synchronicities and magic with each other and then a broader audience. I am so grateful for this person who landed in my life to push me into a more aware and deeper-seeking lifestyle! I haven’t had any trouble spotting synchronicities; the biggest problem I’ve had is interpreting them.

Last weekend, my partner Owen and I traveled to Taos and Santa Fe, NM. At the beginning of the trip, I asked for synchronicities along the way that would help us decide if we should move to either place, as we want to eventually move somewhere outside of Flagstaff, AZ. We search for someplace with new opportunities for professional growth (I’m a writer and Owen’s a sculptor.) I was reading “The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity” by Trish MacGregor and Rob MacGregor and realized that I had to ask for synchronicities to answer my questions–and be ready for them when they came.

In Taos, we checked into our Airbnb, owned by Joni who looked like a lot of other in-shape older yogis from Flagstaff. In fact, her parents lived in Flagstaff. After dinner we went to the Alley Cantina. I struck up a conversation with Tony, an Australian hotelier who had traveled to New Mexico for a few days. Owen discovered that he and Tony both knew two different businessmen from the days when Owen worked as a consultant and designer. Both were named John, one from New Zealand and the other from Bali. Then I looked at the dance floor and saw a friend from Flagstaff. She was an English instructor for the university I used to work for. I passed her in the hallways many times as I finished my MFA degree and I had boogied next to her many nights in my hometown—and here she was, seven hours away in Taos, to visit her mom and dad.

We thought for sure we were supposed to move to Taos that night. But in the morning, the town wasn’t as appealing. We listened to a few different shopkeepers, and they all inferred similar themes; choosing the artist lifestyle meant being poor and Taos is not as chi-chi as Santa Fe (and proud of it.) After we left each store, we joked about how everyone “talked long…and listened short.” People seemed frustrated with the local economy. Some shopkeepers even followed me around and watched me so close that I felt like I couldn’t touch anything–or that I was a potential shoplifter! Still, we had a great time and saw Big Horn Sheep, ducks and hawks when we went to BlackRock Hot Springs.

The animals had a lot to say this trip. As we left town, a coyote crossed in front of us. The trickster archetype! I had read “Synchronicities are the jokers in nature’s pack of cards for they refuse to play by the rules and offer a hint that, in our quest for certainty about the universe, we have ignored some vital clues,” (F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind.) I realized the Taos synchronicities were a bit of a cosmic joke. We had felt at home in Taos because it was similar to our current life, the place that has served well, but that we are looking to expand our horizons beyond. In fact, we had both received synchronicities from our old careers—the very ones that we had left behind because of their creative limits!

When we went to Santa Fe, we also saw someone from Flagstaff, one of my son’s high school teachers. Then we went to Allan Houser’s sculpture studio, as he has influenced Owen on a current marble sculpture project. By chance, Allan’s number one assistant, Tony Lee, who worked with Houser from 1989 til his death in 1994, showed up at the studio. Another Tony! Owen had a great time talking with him about sculpture. This was a synchronicity that pointed positively towards Owen’s new career potential in Santa Fe, but I’m not sure what it meant for me.

Paul Kammerer was an Austrian biologist who came up with the theory of “the law of seriality.” He stated that the phenomenon was an objective but undiscovered principle of nature. He used to study random-chance events to see how many people were using umbrellas or wearing the same hat and classified his synchronicities into first, second, third, and high-order series. All of Kammerer’s research influenced Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity. I’m not sure what all the synchronicities in Santa Fe meant, but I’m collecting them and others to keep track.

Here is a list of other things I’ve noticed this week:

Lost Items

  • My turquoise horse fetish that represented healing and strength
  • Owen’s Ipad
  • Taos guide books

Found Items

  • Owen’s Ipad! (lost in the menus at El Gamal, Taos)
  • 1 pink plastic bead
  • 4 pennies (in the Hot Springs in Taos)
  • 1 quarter and 1 dime (near the Earthships in Taos)
  • $12 in bills (in the snow, near the fabulous waterfall in Flagstaff)

Animals

  • horses
  • big horn sheep
  • ducks
  • hawks
  • quail
  • coyote

Words/Names

  • clavicle (x3)
  • lacrima (x3)
  • milieu (x2)
  • Tony (x2—one from Santa Fe, one from Australia)
  • Nimue (x2—in novel and Fairy Cards)

Numbers

  • 11:11 and 1:11 (too many times to count)
  • 12
    • found $12 in snow
    • dreamt I received a $1200 rent check

Dream Images

  • phonebooths and coins
  • buying eggs and milk from the grocery store
  • a scooter
  • the badhakonasana yoga pose (needed for female cycle)
  • Crystal Bridges (the museum in Arkansas that I’ve never been to)
  • cupcakes
  • cell phones and voicemail messages 10 minutes long
  • oil and vinegar
  • Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac

 

Some of the synchronicities are just surface level coincidences that tickle my fancy, but there are those synchronicities that hint at a deeper order in the universe. I found out that physicist David Bohm called this the implicate or “enfolded order”, that births everything in the universe, even time. External reality is the explicate order. Synchronicity is where the implicate and the explicate, the inner and the outer, coincide. This is also called psychoid, where it shares both psychic and material aspects and acts as well on a psychic or material plane. (A synchronicity here; I found David Bohm’s book at a bookstore after I had read this about him. It was so scientific it went completely above my head, but it was fun to find it.)

This hunt for deeper meaning is making me feel more alive. It gives me daily motivation to wake up, feeling like life is a treasure hunt and I’m the only one that can understand its clues. I feel a bit younger too, as if life is more playful and fun.