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.
