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I was watching a video on YouTube in the kitchen while making a snack: oatmeal and flax. I was weighing out the flax at the precise moment the narrator of the video said, “And one day he was weighing some flax.”

The narrator was Alan Watts, and he was reading a Zen Buddhist story from The Gateless Gate. The person weighing flax was a Zen master. While weighing the flax, a student asked the master, “What is Buddha?” And the teacher replied, “This flax weighs three pounds.”

I have no idea what, if anything, any of this means. Link to video cued to the relevant portion:

I dream a lot, I always have. And sometimes I know from the dream what will happen.

In 2016, I had a dream, which I told to my husband after we’d got up that morning. I dreamt I was in a garden, sitting on a wooden bench, and behind the backrest of the bench was a ledge. On the ledge was a small kitten playing with a moth. This wasn’t nasty, it was joyful. I picked the kitten up and brought it to the front of the bench. There was also a tiny baby on the ledge, which I picked up and brought to the front. I leaned forward with the baby in my hands, and the overwhelming feeling of ‘heavenly bliss’ was so immense, I cannot do it justice in words.

As soon as I finished telling the dream to my husband, I heard a Skype call coming in. I rushed inside to take the call. It was my daughter who lives on the other side of the world from me. She was terribly distressed as their kitten had just been run over and killed. She was further distressed, as she said this brought back memories of the loss she felt when, at two months pregnant, her baby’s heartbeat stopped.

When people talk of NDEs, they speak of the overwhelming sense of unconditional love they feel from their experience. This is what this dream showed me. ‘Heavenly Bliss’ isn’t part of my usual vocabulary but is the only way I can describe the feeling I had in this dream.

In 1997, I was 29 and was reaching a turning point in my life. I had completed my MBA in May, and my 2.5-year marriage had come to end.

What a perfect time to book a cruise with my two sisters and two best friends! Party of 5, ALL ABOARD! We set sail aboard the Carnival cruise ship ECSTASY on Nov. 16, 1997, headed to the Bahamas.

We had a most memorable vacation! We met so many people and partied to the max! It was a trip that will be remembered by us all forever!

The next year, I was living alone in a two-bedroom duplex. On July 20, 1998, I awoke from a dream. I remember lying there thinking about it. In my dream, I saw that the cruise ship ECSTASY was on fire. It was a surprisingly vivid dream.

I thought it was odd but proceeded to get up and start my day as usual. I took my shower, then turned on the TV to watch the news. To my horror, I saw on the news broadcast that the ECSTASY cruise ship was ON FIRE! It was burning after departing the port of Miami, Florida, en route to Key West, Florida.

The fire was believed to have started in the laundry room as a result of welding. Several crew members and passengers suffered minor injuries. Losses from the fire exceeded $17 million. The ship’s damage was repaired, and it continued to sail until its final voyage taking place from October 10-15, 2022. The Carnival Ecstasy carried nearly 5.5 million guests in its 31 years of service.

I’ll never forget this dream and seeing it on the news the next day!

In 2008, I read the book, The Black Swan. The book uses “black swan” as a metaphor to describe an unexpected significant event, good or bad. I had never seen a black swan, but soon I was seeing posters with black swans all over town. Every time, it reminded me of the unexpected.

News soon came that my mother had been in an accident while on vacation in Kauai. I traveled there, saw my mother still in a coma, and then friends took me to dinner. It was at that restaurant I saw, for the first time, a pair of Black-Necked Swans (white with black necks). Again, I was reminded of unexpected events, black or white, bitter or sweet, sometimes both. So, I called Janet to come be with her sister. I told her of the interesting coincidences involving the book, posters in Holland, and black-necked swans.

A few days later was Easter Sunday, so we went to a new place for brunch. As we walked toward the restaurant, the path took us over a bridge spanning a goldfish pond. As we looked out over the water, there we saw a pair of swans, but this time they were completely black and the first black swans I had ever seen. Immediately, I knew what God was telling me: my mother was going to pass away, but I didn’t have to be afraid because ‘He’ was present.

After lunch, we returned to the hospital. Two hours later, my mother passed away. She was in my arms, I told her I loved her and would until the end of my days. We were with her when she breathed her last breath. We both wept… but we also knew the Lord was there.

Twenty years later, and my souvenir remains a significant reminder of what I’m alive for.

When I cranked the SOBE drink open and none of the ring broke (don’t they always, at least a little?), there was already an odd pull on my interest.

The movie Old School was big at the time, and as I looked to the underside to read this line from one of its more memorable scenes, it was a great signifier of the creative progress I was about to make.

With my last name being Blue, I’d often hear that uplifting quote from classmates. A lot of us high schoolers appreciated the humor of that movie, and it was kind of endearing to be recognized like that.

Point being: I was at a desk job that I landed right out of school and felt compelled to buy a sketchbook for work that day. As I drew out my first “therapeutic” kind of sketch, I was given an inspiration that acts as a fuel for the rest of my life to ride on.

The sketchbook and drink cap alignment with me and my activity in that moment created a truly meaningful coincidence and acted as a super noteworthy form of validation and encouragement. I intuitively found a way to process my feelings and was that much more inspired, starting down the road of paying attention to the world with artist’s eyes.

In January 1979, I was looking at an atlas in my office about mid-morning when a female work colleague walked by and observed what I was doing. We had the following conversation:

She: “What are you doing, looking for the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?”

Me: “No, I’m planning a trip. But what do you mean by ‘the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’?”

She: “Oh, you know. That song by Gordon Lightfoot.”

Me: “I’m not familiar with that one. How does it go?”

She: “Well, it’s a real long song about a ship that sank in the Great Lakes a few years ago.”

Me: “Oh, yeah. I remember that incident, but I didn’t know there was a song about it.”

She: “Well, there is. But I guess you don’t hear it that much on the radio because of its length.”

Me: “Well, if I ever hear it, I’ll let you know.”

We went on to talk about other things. Late that afternoon, I got a ride home from work (back then I normally took the bus). I had no intention of going out again once I entered my apartment, but my wife was preparing dinner and she informed me that we needed some milk.

I stalled for as long as I could, hoping to delay the inevitable. But finally, I walked to my car to go to the supermarket. When I started my car, the radio came on. What were the first words I heard? The final chorus of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”!

In midsummer 2022, I was woken by a crashing sound from my window. I got out of bed to check what it was and saw a gray bird on my verandah, so I immediately went down to help it.

I did not touch it at once so it could disperse its trauma. I waited for it to come to, but sadly it did not recover. I buried it under the hydrangea bed where its body will nourish the soil.

The thing in my mind was, what volition (Matthew Zylstra’s talk on The Coincidence Project Speaker Series) caused the bird to crash on my window, wake me, then die?

Summer this year, I had a pair of birds that nested inside a hole on the outside wall. 🤣 It’s the same kind of bird as the bird that died last year, and I could hear the little ones from the inside wall of my bedroom.

It was so lovely to hear them throughout the Spring until it was time for them to fly. One little bird was left to fend for itself and it hopped off the nest. I took it inside but decided to give it back to nature with the wish it would survive.

I’ve been planning to close that little hole, but…if other creatures would like to use it, I am happy to share my space.

My mother passed away from COVID complications Nov. 4, 2020.

She was in an aged care facility, quarantined after requiring fluids in hospital. Soon after, on Oct. 30, she was diagnosed with asymptomatic COVID.

She was unable to have family visits, which was horribly frustrating because I already felt helpless being so far away in Melbourne, Australia. To make my mother feel at ease, we were supposed to have a FaceTime call on Nov. 5.

The night before, I got the worst call of my life.

Not only was my worst fear that something would happen to my mother while I lived abroad, but I couldn’t even fly home when she was diagnosed. To watch a funeral via Zoom was unfathomable.

The pain was the worst I’ve ever felt in my life.

Fast forward several months, while walking to work, I stumbled across a beautiful autumn maple leaf. I picked it up and took it with me to work.

Sitting at my desk watching the cars driving by, a white feather trickled in front of my office window, just for me. (I always asked Mom in spirit to show me signs, either with a white feather or white butterfly.)

I bolted outside, grabbed the feather, and rested it on top of my autumn leaf.

When I walked into work feeling heavyhearted the following week, I saw my feather being delicately hugged by my autumn leaf. This could only be the work of my mother. No doubt, I am the delicate feather, and she is the maple leaf wrapping her energy around me. The feather and leaf still rest on my desk.

The photo shows the tattoo I had created in her memory. The 11’s represent the month she passed and the time the FaceTime call never happened, 11am, Nov. 5, 2020.

Years ago, I bought a pony named Sweet Chance, also known as Sweetie, for my daughter. A few weeks later, my mother was cleaning out her garage, and there was a piece of wood in her garbage can. I looked at it and said to her, “Oh, I’m going to take this a make a sign for Sweetie’s stall.”

I pulled it out of the can and turned it over. It was carved with the words, “Sweet Chance.” We never knew where it came from, but I kept it for the 31 years this sweet pony lived with me until she died.

You can’t see the sign in the photo, but that is her in the stall and her blind companion “looking” at her.

I have many coincidences. This particular one is unique.

When I was a little girl, we lived in Russia for two years. When we came back, I was six years old. The year was 1980, and my father was a Turkish air force attaché. When he retired at a rather early age, we moved to our hometown by the coast of Turkey. I was about 15, having extra math lessons in the summer at a friend’s house.

While studying, I heard someone calling “Taliha” (a name I recognized). I stopped the lesson and kept paying attention, then asked about the next-door neighbors. Apparently, the man was a Turkish ambassador in Russia. I went home and told my mother that I think one of our dear helpers from back in Russia might just be here.

My mum, sister, and I knocked on their door. My mother asked if it was possible “Taliha” was the same Taliha we had known but had had not contact with for 11 years. And there she was: Taliha!

We hugged, crying happy tears. Still today, I don’t know why. I never saw her again, but that was one happy day, thanks to my intuition and ability to hear the signs.

My first and second sons were both born on Tuesday, 19th November.

The first son at 2.20pm in 1974.
The second son at 2.25pm in 1991.

They couldn’t be more different, apart from being tall and gorgeous.

The first son spent 13 years in Los Angeles, mostly illegally as he overstayed his visa. He said he doesn’t need me or anyone, so I haven’t heard from him for over 10 years. He cut contact earlier as well, no contact for 7 years. He cares for no one. I’m trying to be ok with this.

The second son married a girl from Iowa and has lived there for the past 7 years. Thank goodness he’s happy and living his life and stays in touch with his mother. 😊

It seems that I ‘lost’ both sons to the US. I wish I had 5 or 6 sons to take the edge off this hurt.

Some years ago, after having lunch with a coworker, on every corner of the street between the restaurant and our jobs, everybody was kissing.

Young couples, old couples, and it even wasn’t a Valentine’s Day. I never saw so many people kissing on the streets, and I never saw it again. It was just a sunny day where everything felt good.

Fantastic lunch break but with no opportunities taken from my side, neither hers…

Ah, regrets…

As a young only child, I was always drawn to stories of miraculously-found siblings like the ones often featured on soap operas. My mother would always dismiss me, but I kept saying that something like that could happen to me one day.

When my father passed away (I was 15 back then), I got a letter from Social Security saying that I was entitled to a small pension, and that the whole amount was going to be divided into two parts. I asked my mother if the second part was for her, and only then she admitted that I had an eight-months-older half-sister, which she never wanted to talk about, since she was a result of my father’s affair.

My mother gave me all the info she had about the girl: her name, the area she lived in, and her mother’s name. I was so pumped with this news that I told the story to my good friend of 10 years, asking if she thought I should try to meet my sister.

When she listened, her eyes were getting wider and wider, and finally she said: “The girl you’re talking about is my classmate. We’re deskmates.” (In Polish schools, we have double desks for two students to sit in.)

I couldn’t believe my own ears! In the end, I needed some time to build up my courage, but when my friend told me my sister was turning 18, I wrote her a birthday card and asked my friend to pass it on. Afterward, my sister invited me to her birthday party, and this was how we finally met.

In late 1999, I was very short of money. My partner had lost his job. Debts were building up. We had to leave our home and try to find jobs in a new town.

One afternoon I was out walking, because I had no cash to buy petrol. My car was about to run out of registration, and I was thinking about how badly I needed the $470 to pay for that. I needed that car on the road so I could look for work. I was a qualified remedial massage therapist at the time.

I had not talked to anybody about my lack of funds, as I felt embarrassed. Nobody owed me a cent.

I had no income, and I knew very well my bank account was almost empty. We had paper bankbooks back then, and I had a balance of less than three dollars in there. Still, I thought, I will withdraw that and buy a loaf of bread.

I went into the bank, and the teller took my bankbook to record the transaction. I had withdrawn the three dollars and the new balance was…$470. I was magically shocked and delighted. I asked the teller who had deposited that, and she could find no name.

I registered my car, and life took an upturn. I have never found an explanation for this serendipitous event.

As a Family Doctor since 1998, synchronicity has accompanied me my whole life, even before I became a Physician.

One night, I vividly dreamed of my aging female patient who was in a nursing home. She had been fine, but in my dream, she asked me to visit her. The next morning, I was still thinking of her on my way to my work and noticed I had some time to drop by, which I never do. I stopped at the nursing home.

Nurse: “What are you doing here?”

Me: “I don’t know. My patient came to me in my dream and asked for help.”

Nurse: “I cannot believe it. The whole weekend, I was trying to get the on-call doctors to come, and no one called back.” (In Germany where I practice, nursing homes or patients cannot call me. They must call the on-call doctors, who might come to visit or, as with this patient, won’t even call back.)

Me: “Well, I’m here. What’s going on?”

Nurse: “The patient is weak and feels she’s dying. Her children are here; they know it’s time for her to leave. She is in her dying process, but it’s painful, full of anguish. I believe some opiate would help, and I cannot find a doctor willing to give her a bit of opiate.”

Me (opening my bag): “The opiate is here.”

I went to the patient’s room where her children were sitting quietly and explained that their mom had called me in my dream. They wept, and I was touched by it. I rarely see families who patiently sit by their dying loved ones and make sure they have time to say farewell.

My small syringe helped her breathe quietly. My visit helped me say goodbye, touch her, and get to know her lovely family. I then rushed back to work. Some hours later she died peacefully — no anguish, no pain.

In 1979, I was working on the “Mississippi Queen” steamboat and had a vacation coming up. I was 24, had never been out of the country, but wanted to go somewhere exotic. I chose Jamaica.

Another employee who had vacationed there heard I was going by myself and gave me very specific instructions for my safety: Go to a little town called Negril, stay at the Tigress Cafe and Cottages, and proprietor Papa Lawrence would ensure my safety at his compound.

After missing my first flight and waiting standby for two days, I sat at the Miami airport, writing in my journal that if I didn’t get called on the next flight, I would not go because I only had four days left. But fate intervened. I got there at midnight.

As I was out and about the next day, I saw a stunning man walking down the beach road as I was riding the opposite way. We locked eyes for a split second. Later, when I got back to my cottage, he was sitting outside his cottage next door.

We had coffee together the next morning and the thunderbolt struck. We spent two memorable days together, after which I told my mother I’d met the man I was going to marry.

Our 43rd anniversary is next month. Space limits me from telling the other details that make this a meta-synchronicity, but there are many more that certainly qualify it as one, including the fact that we would both be in Cincinnati six weeks later.

I had been talking with the counselor at the Cancer Center and discussing at great length “empaths” and challenges we in particular face in life in general. She stressed that I could be in charge of my reactions and make choices about how to react to things.

Upon arriving home after the appointment, I pulled into the garage and opened the car door to get out. Right under where I was about to place my feet was a snake.

I immediately thought about what she had said and had absolutely no reaction, no surge of adrenaline, and just thought, “Oh, how interesting. A snake in the garage.” I waited until it moved out of the way and got out of the car with no panic at all.

My recent experience has to do with the numbers in my month/day of birth (1111), and Nikola Tesla’s theory of the powerful connection in the numbers 3-6-9.

Fifteen years ago, my father was murdered. This traumatic experience took a toll on my life and health. Thoughts about my father consumed me. After his burial, I never visited his grave.

Recently, my stepsister came to Florida for a visit and wanted to visit our father’s grave. I decided to accompany her. We arrived separately at the cemetery. She was already at the office getting directions to the gravesite, because neither one of us knew the location.

As I arrived, I drove in on my own. Feeling an eerie presence, I noticed a harsh wind blowing as clouds began to cover the sun. The wind was only affecting certain trees, creating a path. For example, trees to the left were blowing, yet trees to the right were still. I thought this was unusual but followed the path.

As a fluke (almost to prove that I may be overanalyzing, a little insane, and probably lost), I repeatedly asked aloud, “Show me where you are. Guide me where to go.”

Suddenly, an extreme warmth and peace came over me. I made a few zigzag turns, then stopped where the trees stopped moving. Minutes later, my stepsister drove down the path, led by a caretaker.

“How did you know where to go?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just followed the moving trees.”

We stood by my father’s grave, speaking of his love and guidance, wishing he were here in the flesh, yet knowing he is always with us. Looking around, I noticed the adjacent headstone. It has my birth month and birthday on it. Also, the birthyear includes powerful numbers 3-6-9 in assortment.

I have a new friend who teaches Vedic chanting. The two of us were sitting in her beautiful garden and talking about how hard it is sometimes to transition from one piece of heaven (like sitting in our gardens in the sunshine) to the next piece of heaven of our day, but how we are also always glad when we make that effort.

I started randomly wittering away about how I find this particularly true on Sunday mornings when I go to a beautiful 1672 Quaker Meeting house in the hills. I threw in an anecdote about one occasion a few years ago in August when this remarkable family from Germany/France, who were homeschooling and travelling the world with five children, came by our Quaker Meeting, and I had been so glad I overcame my reluctance to move from the garden after all.

My friend asked me a few questions about them, which seemed a little odd. Then she said, “They were house-sitting for me here. That is why they were in this area.” And she told me the exact year (2017), which we both agreed had been a particularly expansive and important year for both of us spiritually, setting whole chains of events, connections, and growth in motion.

The most intense synchronicity I ever had was connected to a dream.

In the dream, I was at an airport somewhere in Southeast Asia, and there were a bunch of businessmen sitting around a table (like a teppanyaki-style hot plate). I joined them, and they were all eating still-moving octopus tentacles. At the moment I tried some, I woke up.

Once awake, I went through my normal morning routine scrolling through my Twitter feed, and one of the first images that popped up was a Japanese samurai helmet with a golden octopus sculpture on the front. This was synchronicity #1, but not the main one that happened that day.

We were planning on booking a trip to Hong Kong, and that day we went to see a travel agent (might explain why I was dreaming of Asian airports!). We were talking with the agent who has been to Hong Kong himself, and he was giving us the rundown of things to see, etc. He was telling us how to get around and told us the name of the Hong Kong metro system: The Octopus!

I got the most intense feeling of epiphany as soon as he said that, and I knew that I either absolutely have to go to Hong Kong or I really should not go there under any circumstance. After some consideration, we opted not to go.

Had we gone, we would have been in Hong Kong in February 2020 at the epicenter of the Covid outbreak. Instead, we were at Universal Studios in Florida having a great time. Weirdest precognizant synchronicity that ever happened to me. At the moment, I keep seeing repeated numbers when I check the time — not worked out what that means yet.

I was on the verge of a manic episode when I had a spiritual moment. I had almost a Kundalini experience.

I cannot describe the intensity of the closeness to God at that moment. A beautiful blue butterfly started to flutter around me. I was in Alabama in a rural, very remote area, and I was at the end of a driveway.

A few moments later, a car full of Jehovah’s Witnesses pulled up to my driveway. They immediately saw me and exited the car and began to speak to me about God. I was floored with the synchronicity.

Dissatisfied with our teaching jobs in South Korea in 1997, my partner and I took a midnight train from the town we were in to the airport in Seoul to catch a plane to Bangkok, Thailand. As Canadians in our thirties, we hoped to experience living in Asia, supporting ourselves by teaching English as a second language.

While in line to check in, I was struck by the fur hat of a gentleman in front of me. I began speaking with him after commenting on his hat, and it transpired that he lived in Canada, although he was born in Malaysia and had business interests in Taiwan. I told him of our plan to teach in Thailand and travel. He gave us his business card (this is before the internet explosion) and said to call him if things didn’t work out in Thailand.

My partner did not get work in Thailand, so after I had worked for a number of months with still no prospect of a job for my partner, we telephoned the man with the fur hat and arranged for ourselves two jobs in Taiwan.

Before leaving Thailand, we took in a Loy Katong festival on an island in southern Thailand. Floats made of coconut, incense, flowers, and candles are launched by people with some of their nail clippings or hair. The floats are meant to take away the old energy of a person for a fresh and luminous start.

After the ceremony we had to catch a ferry to the mainland to catch a train, then a plane to Taiwan. As I was telling the story of our Loy Katong to a British couple we met on the ferry, a wind picked up the hat off my head and it floated away on the water. The British guy quipped, “You forgot the incense and nail clippings!”

On February 12, 2022, I woke up to the news my youngest brother had died at the age of 33. I was in shock and admittedly extremely emotional.

Later, I was driving to my best friend’s house, and I said aloud in my vehicle, “Just give me a sign you’re okay, Kyle.” I can’t recall if it was a minute or two minutes later when my Apple playlist popped on in my car. It regularly will pick music it thinks you’ll enjoy, and the song that came on I had never heard before.

At 1:11 p.m., a song I had NEVER heard of came on (see screen shot image). I’m surprised I didn’t drive off the road). It was: “Remember Me?” KYLE — SMYLE (Extended).

I have around three coincidences per day. I try to ignore them, but I’m happy to find this group after so many years. Hopefully one day we will understand how this is happening.

First story:

I was speaking randomly with a friend in a bus about marine sailors. Seconds later, a guy jumped on the bus sporting the classic marine sailor tattoo.

Second story:

I lost my job in Germany and found shelter in the house of a German friend I had randomly met. My ex-boss came to bring me some of my money in cash at this house. The German friend just told me that day that he had owned a Porsche 911 in the past. The cash the boss brought me was exactly 911 euros.

The boss and friend then realized they had known of each other for 25 years and had never met till that day, just because of me. The friend had a workshop container in the same yard with my ex-boss. They had lost the connection with each other until I reconnected them.

Indeed, I was in a desperate need, and something magical and impossible happened.

In the early 1830s, the Parker family, along with many others, moved west. Settling about 30 miles from what would become Waco, Texas, they built a fort as protection from Indian raids. The Comanche raided the settlement a couple of years later, during which several children were abducted.

One of those kids was Cynthia Ann Parker, who later gave birth to the last warrior chieftain, Quanah, for the Comanche. Quanah later took the name Parker to honor his mother, becoming known as Quanah Parker.

As I was working for a while in that area, and also because that fort is still standing, I drove there to tour the premises. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and left 2-3 hours later, going back to my apartment in Waco.

Knowing my eldest daughter had an interest in Native American stories, I emailed her concerning my experiences at the fort. She replied saying she was in process of reading a book about Indian raids on settlements and the kidnapping of children.

The raids were often done often for money (people would pay ransoms demanded for the return of the kids) but also to introduce “new blood” into the Indian village. Those being “closed societies,” it did not take long before most everyone was related to everyone else.

During the course of our emailing back and forth with my daughter, it was established that just about the time I was touring the fort, she had been reading the chapter in her book dealing with Cynthia Ann Parker.

I was hired as a nanny for two families. I worked for one family until the mom had a second child, then stayed on with the second family until that mom had a baby.

Meanwhile, the first family had a good friend who met me, thought I was a good nanny, and in conversation with another family she knew who just had their first child, said, “Too bad C is already employed, as she would be a great nanny for your family.”

This family were having a tough time as the dad had cancer. Just at the point I was let go from the first two families, I met the third family and was hired. They actually let a nanny go with a month’s pay and hired me.

There was a instant connection between the dad and me. We had some deep conversations, as he was a brilliant man. His dad had died when he was 16, and he told me his dad had been a airplane mechanic. I told him that my cousin had been a pilot.

We left it at that until one day he questioned me a bit more, and by the end of our conversation, we realized his dad had been the mechanic for my cousin, flying C130 Hercules aircraft in Angola Africa. His dad had died of a heart attack in Angola.

I asked my cousin, and he remembered Joe, even had a group picture of the crew! So the dad took care of my cousin and I took care of the grandson he never met. Sadly, the young dad passed before his son’s second birthday. I took care of dad and baby until I was no longer needed.

Not every date has obvious coincidences, but what about 5-22-2023? 5 + 2 + 2 +2 + 0 + 2 + 3 = 16

5 + 16 = 21. So: 20, 21, 22, 23

2 + 0 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 = 14

5 + 14 = 19.  So: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

Who’s to say it’s just a coincidence?

In 2020, I had a dream about my ex-boyfriend. First, a bit about him: He was a childhood love, passionate and violent, and we were a couple from 1998–2008. At 24, I got pregnant, but he and his parents forced me to have an abortion. At 27, we moved to a Greek island.

Around 2009, we broke up. After 10 years of violence and jealousy, I was free. He moved back to our homeland and became a monk. In 2011, I returned to my homeland to visit my family. The next day, my sister woke me to say that my ex was dead. He’d had a heart attack on the road while delivering paintings to a place close to our neighborhood. That was the first coincidence.

I returned to the island and had a new partner. I lost three pregnancies, the last one in 2018. The same year, my father died from cancer. I went back to care for him in my homeland, but he passed one August night at the hospital while I was having a cigarette on the balcony.

Back to the 2020 dream…

I had just broken up with my partner. That same night in my dream, I saw an old female friend who was pregnant. Surprised, I asked about the pregnancy, and she told me the father was my deceased ex. I was angry for the betrayal in my dream, then found him on a balcony, but he refused to look at me and didn’t care about my pain.

I woke the next day, and received a phone call from a woman who said she wasn’t my friend but wanted to tell me that she and my boyfriend had had an affair since 2017.

The facts after this are so crazy, and so many, but the point is that he acted like my ex. He didn’t care about my pain.

This was my most recent coincidence from May 3, 2023. I have a file where I record all my coincidences 🙂

For an hour one morning, I was doing research on German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich’s involvement in bringing light to the global Volkswagen emissions scandal in 2015, as I wanted to inform others in New Zealand of his high standing and credibility. He successfully sued Deutsche Bank, too.

He is coming to New Zealand as a valid legal jurisdiction to hear and adjudicate his team’s case against several agencies for Crimes Against Humanity.

That evening, I was listening to a few videos on Near Death Experiences (I’m interested in meta/quantum physics, energy, soul life, etc.), going from one to the next, including Anita Moorjani’s, in which she refers to Dr. Jeffrey Long. I looked him up, found a two-hour video, and four minutes into it, Art Bell mentions the Volkswagen scandal — totally unrelated to the rest of the video. I was gobsmacked!

I can see the correlation between the Volkswagen scandal of 2015 and this video also made in 2015… but still an amazing coincidence!

I was watching the YouTube video of Dr. Beitman being interviewed on Next Level Soul while I was getting ready in the morning. Dr. Beitman and Alex (the host) were talking about coincidences and why they happen.

For some reason, I decided to pick an Oracle card, which I keep on the side of my vanity. I shuffled while watching and picked a card. It was a card I’ve never picked before.

What I read astounded me! The photo I included shows the video I was watching, the card I picked, and the corresponding description for that card.

Link to full-sized image: https://thecoincidenceproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IMG_3263-8aa8d11c.jpeg

Link to Dr. Beitman’s podcast episode on Next Level Soul: https://nextlevelsoul.com/dr-bernard-beitman/

I have thousands of synchronicity stories, but lately I’ve noticed that the TV has been synced to the words I say and even the things I do. This is after a tragic “accident” happened to me (really, it was orchestrated to put me where I need to be).

The other day, I set fire to some sage just as the person on the podcast I was watching began choking, saying his wife must be burning sage upstairs, and it makes him choke. And this was after hearing continually repeated words that I was saying and writing while watching the podcast.

It happens so much that I’m not surprised anymore. It’s just normal.

What a coincidence! John and I were having dinner in Fort Collins with Dan and his girlfriend Alex, when some high school science kids approached us with a fundraising request.

They asked us to donate money to guess how much weight a balsa wood structure could bear. I said, “Sure, I’ll give you five dollars. How much do other people guess this thing can bear?”

They revealed that people guess between 400 and 1,400 pounds. I pulled out my phone, opened Venmo to pay my five dollars, and saw the time was 5:55pm. So I spontaneously said, “My guess is 555 pounds.”

John and Dan gave me that “Oh, here she goes again” look. I stood front row as they put the weight on and, of all the people, guess who won?

I won!!! You should have seen John and Dan’s faces when they saw me jumping up and down and getting all those prizes. Lesson: when you get an intuitive hit, act on it. 😊

In 1995, I worked for American Airlines and had to transfer to MCI Airport in Kansas City to keep my job. At the time, my mother was the supervisor of screening at MCI.

A woman who worked with my mother — I called her “Ten” because she was a beautiful blonde — knew I was being transferred to Kansas City. She told me about her son, whom she hadn’t heard from in months and couldn’t get in touch with. He was working in Montana last she knew.

I felt bad for Joanna (“Ten”), and to make her feel better, I said, “When I see him, I’ll tell him he’d better call home!” I’d never met or seen this kid, and didn’t even remember his name after our conversation.

I drove out to Kansas City from Rhode Island in my loaded-up Isuzu, got halfway across Missouri, and stopped for gas. As I was about to drive away, a young man came up to my window and asked if I was from Rhode Island (my license plate said so). I said yes, and he said, “My mother’s the supervisor at airport screening, do you know her?” I said, “No, my mother’s the supervisor there!”

He told me her name, and sure enough, Joanna did fill in on my mother’s days off! If I’d been standing up, I would’ve fallen over, realizing this was Joanna’s son!

I told him his mother was worried about him and he’d better call her. He explained he’d left where he was recently living to find new work, so that’s why his mother couldn’t find him.

Clearly we were meant to meet, because Joanna needed to hear from her son! My sons were little at the time, so I definitely understood her worry.

A couple of years ago, I was experiencing significant pain near my ear. I went to the dentist, thinking maybe something was wrong with a tooth.

It turned out a tooth on the other side of my mouth was infected. I couldn’t feel it when it started, because that side of my face was numb. The dentist office helped me set an appointment with another provider to perform a root canal, and the only available appointment was two weeks away.

I was in excruciating pain, but it wasn’t noticeable from the outside, so I went back to work. When the new dental provider called me later, I offered to give them a free service so I could be seen sooner.

I went in the next day, and they told me that if I’d waited any longer, I could have died from a serious infection. It was that bad, in fact the worst they had ever seen, but my dentist wasn’t able to tell from the X-ray.

I’m so thankful this happened! I may not be here today had it not.

It was October 1969, Kiev, Ukraine. I was 19, riding the trolleybus, looking out the window. At one stop, I noticed an old acquaintance across the street. He wasn’t important to me, but for some reason, I felt a powerful urge — almost a panic attack — to get off the bus.

I struggled to get out, exiting through the wrong door against the line of people trying to get aboard. I waved to my friend, who was talking to a man I’d never seen before.

Crossing the street, I heard a voice from nowhere. “This is your husband!” It was before I even saw the man’s face. I thought it was a nonsense, but when my friend introduced us, I got a strange sensation in my solar plexus, a strong knowing that he would be my husband!

Let me tell you, I didn’t plan to get married. I was dating someone else (not seriously), so I quickly dismissed the silly voice.

In a few days, my doorbell rang, and both my friend and the man had come for a visit. We sat in my living room and talked. He was very nice, handsome and polite. In a few days, he came alone, and we talked again, nothing romantic.

To make a long story short, after briefly dating, both of us knew we were meant to be. He proposed in November. My parents were in shock, but somehow felt positive about him. In February, we married, and it has been 54 years, two beautiful children (adults now), and three granddaughters.

My soul had recognized him, and I got off at the correct stop.

My daughter had just started college and moved out for the first time. A few weeks into school, she came home for a visit and brought home her Social Security card, which she left on the kitchen counter.

A day or two later, I came home from work and found the front door unlocked and all my clothes thrown about. Someone had broken into my house, taking mostly jewelry. As I looked around, I realized they had also stolen the Social Security card, which I had forgotten to put away.

I looked up and said to no one in particular, “I don’t need the jewelry. I only wanted the Social Security card back.”

At 8:00 pm, an officer finally showed up to take my report. At 9:00 pm, two other offers knocked on the door and asked my daughter if she was Sarah. “Is this your Social Security card?” they asked.

They had picked up two kids that day and found the card in their pocket! 😀 Not sure who heard me, but I was grateful we got the card back.

I was returning home from a business trip late one night and had parked in satellite parking at Dulles, where there were acres of cars. At the airport, I started talking with a couple who said they had no idea where their car was, noting how late in the evening it was.

I was alone, so they said, “We’re going to make sure you get to your car safely, then we’ll look for our car.” I thought that was sweet of them and was thinking I could help them as well.

After we got off the bus and found my car, the man began saying, “Oh my God!” I asked if something was wrong. He shook his head and pointed. Their car was touching my car, hood to hood.

I had actually led them to their car. We were all stunned with no words to express the magnitude of the coincidence.

I was 16 years old, driving to my aunt’s house in a terrible New York snowstorm. The winds were blowing fiercely, and the snow was so thick and I couldn’t see two feet in front of me.

There were no other cars on this particular road to her house, and I was so scared! I started crying and asking God to please help me.

Then, within 5 minutes, a big snowplow truck came out of nowhere, got in front of me and plowed everything in front of me until I safely reached my aunt’s house!

When I was 16, I lived in New York City. I had a dream one night that I met Paul McCartney and he asked me out on a date.

The next day, a friend and I went to Central Park. I told him my dream, and he teased me. Later, we were sitting on a bench. “Here comes Paul McCartney,” said my friend. I thought he was joking, but sure enough, Paul and his new wife Linda sat down on the same bench as we were on.

I was very excited and gushed as I walked over and spoke with them. They were both kind and friendly, and he gave me his autograph.

Later, I realized my dream had come true — except for the date, of course!

Six months after my husband died, I met a friend for lunch on my wedding anniversary. She gave me a gift in a bag bearing the name of a kitchen store in Seattle, The Wooden Spoon.

My first date with my husband had been at a restaurant called The Woode Spoon. I was speechless and had no doubt that it was Matt sending me a message.

I have so many instances of “coincidences” coming about and being profoundly meaningful, but one that blows my mind every time I think about it happened recently.

I had been having a lot of anxiety and panic about finances, work, and personal relationships. I felt lost and alone. I finally accepted I needed to ask for help (which I am notoriously bad at).

I was in bed crying and said, “Spirit, if you are here and supporting me, and if everything is going to be okay, please send me a specific sign. Send me a cup with a heart on it.” I had heard of other people asking for specific signs from Spirit in the past, but avoided it because I was worried I wouldn’t get a response. This time, I was ready.

The next morning, I was scrolling my phone and came across a picture of a mug in the shape of a heart. “Hmmm, interesting,” I thought, ”but it doesn’t really feel like a sign. This must just be a coincidence.” Within a few more hours, a picture of a mug with a heart on it and a winking face showed up on Facebook, and I knew it was confirmation I was looking for. Since that day, I’ve never seen any cups with hearts again.

This confirmed to me that we are not alone, guidance is always available, and the Universe sends us what we need and ask for. I love this story because it shows us our power and the greater connection in this life.

I lost my oldest daughter in September 2019. A few months before, I kept running across near-death experience (NDE) videos and people who could recall their past lives.

When my daughter passed, I decided to write a book about miracles to help me grieve. On January 1st, we drove to the Tennessee mountains, a place she loved, to leave some of her ashes. I got lost for five hours, and after going through three states, I reached the border and picked the second path out of two trails.

On the way up, we saw a tree. Something told me to stop there. It was getting dark, and we were running out of time. My middle daughter stopped in front of the tree I had paused at, then started to cry.

Carved in the bark of the tree were the first two letters of my oldest daughter’s name.

Every Friday in 2006, I cooked large amounts of food to take to my sick aunt’s place. One Friday, I was so exhausted I was barely able to load the car with my baby, the food, and myself to let the car carry us to my aunt’s for the weekend.

As I locked the house behind me, I commented that the fairies were going to have to step up and do the dishes. If they didn’t, the immense dried-on mess I would return to would just be too much to face. But there were no fairies. No one was checking on me and no one had a key, but I let myself really enjoy the laugh anyway.

After returning home, I took a breath and went to handle the disaster. The pots, pans, muffin tins, and utensils towered over the sink. I grabbed the large stock pot first and ran water to start it soaking… but it was spotless.

A chill went through me. I thought back HARD about whether I had rinsed anything: I had NOT. So I just set the pot aside to do the rest. But… muffin tins: spotless, cheese shredder: spotless, inside and out. Every last utensil, every cup to the bottom, every surface including the sink itself: spotless. I could have taken everything out of the sink and put it back into the cupboards!

So I sat down again. Thinking even harder and in tears. Did I forget cleaning everything?

The next morning I went into the back bathroom. The cabinet under the sink was open and three black kittens disappeared into a hole in the bottom. While I was out, a stray mama kitty and her six kittens had broken in and licked everything clean!

One evening before bed, I lamented to my college-aged son that I wished I were closer to my family. My parents had passed away when I was in my 30’s. Now in my 50’s, I hardly spoke to my two sisters. I’m the youngest sibling, and as a child I drove my mom nuts asking for an older brother. She had declared the request impossible!

So, with thoughts of family filling my head, I declared aloud that the universe would bring me an older brother. And I meant it, with full conviction in my heart. My son and I had recently discovered the Mandela Effect, so I believed the universe is malleable and I could have an older brother. I went to sleep knowing it would happen, just not how or when.

The next day, I got a call from a private detective who had been hired by a man in New York (I’m in Utah) to find his family. The New York man was adopted and had been searching for years. I was elated and asked how long the detective had been searching. He’d been hired that very morning!

Many members of my family had submitted DNA to Ancestry.com, and through these records, the detective determined that the New York man was either my half-brother or first cousin. He asked if I was willing to exchange contact information with the man. Of course, I said yes and agreed to a DNA sample as well.

The detective gave my information to my brother, and within 30 minutes I was looking at the LinkedIn profile of a man named Billy — the spitting image of my father. I cried, and we spoke for the first time that night.

A few weeks later the DNA test confirmed he is indeed my half-brother!

Years ago, I had multiple (accidental) synchronistic experiences tied to artwork I was doing at the time. I finally decided recently to see if I could trigger one deliberately.

I took a drawing I had started back when I was first experiencing this and turned it into a fairly simple painting (above). I called it “Sync Generator,” a reference to a piece of video equipment that was central to one of those earlier events. I felt like necessary elements included: a clear intention to trigger something, humor, references to earlier experiences, and in my case, both silver and gold highly-reflective paint (for reasons too complicated to explain here.)

Long story short, within days of finishing it, I had one of the most profound synchronistic experiences I’d ever experienced. It tied directly to my artwork, family history, and an activist issue I have been involved with for years.

I feel like I succeeded, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I’m leery of “chasing the rabbit,” i.e., trying to trigger another experience right away. I’d be interested to hear any reactions.

I had been thinking about how much I wanted to own a copy of a New York Times cookbook that was about soups and breads, but didn’t want to spend money to buy a new book or pay the monthly fee to be a digital New York Times subscriber.

I was taking my usual daily walk in Vermont and passed a book kiosk, so I opened it up to look at what books were offered, but none caught my interest. I continued my two-mile walk, and when I passed the kiosk again, something told me to look once more.

There was a New York Times cookbook in good condition by one of their columnists, featuring hundreds of recipes for only soups and breads.

This happened a long time ago, but it stays with me to this day. My family and I had moved out of state, and it didn’t work out. We had to make a quick move back to our hometown where we owned a home. Well, the year before when we moved, I had given up my job at a local tech company. I immediately starting job searching and just happened to have an interview around the corner from my old office.

After the failed interview, I decided to stop in and say hi to my old colleagues. As I came in the door, my ex-manager was standing in the reception area.  She was surprised to see me and asked what I was doing in town. I gave her the backstory and said I was looking for a job. Her eyes lit up. “You need a job? Have I got an offer for you!”

Within the week, I was back at work in my previous position and felt like I had never left. It was like coming home.

In the 1970s, I was on an astrological lecture tour and spoke to a spiritual group in Pennsylvania. Afterward, the group leaders, a man and a woman who did channeling, invited me to attend a séance. Not my cup of tea, but as the guest of honor, I couldn’t refuse.

In the circle, the principals spoke in seemingly phony voices. He claimed to be the spirit of the Marcus Aurelius, she an American Indian princess. They gave each person advice that sounded like watered-down Theosophy.

Finally, they came to me. “Someone is trying to reach you,” they declared. “An astrologer who has something to tell you.” It was supposedly a “Professor Seward” from the early 20th century.

Back home, I was at the library going through a large index file, looking for information on astrological cycles and mapping techniques. Out of curiosity, I searched for Professor Seward, to no avail. Before closing the drawer, I randomly stuck my finger into the drawer and pulled the first card. It was The Zodiac And Its Mysteries — by Professor Seward! I asked for it at the desk, but it was missing.

The next day, I asked my publisher about the book. They said they’d check and get back to me. That night I had a vivid dream. An older man sat behind a carved oaken desk. On it were a brass armillary sphere, brass telescope, and other instruments. Behind him was a wall of leather-bound books.

I asked about my astrological mapping problems, and he brushed me aside. “You need the zenith, the azimuth, the local horizon. Here’s how to do it.” He showed me overlay templates to put on a graphed version of a horoscope that would reveal it all.

When I woke, I noted what he had said. I found the new approach to be useful, something I would never have conceived myself.

Two days later, I got a call. “We found the book you were looking for.” Paging through it, I found a picture of Professor Seward in his office. There was the carved oaken desk, the armillary sphere, the telescope, the leather books, and the exact fellow from my dream! I was speechless…

I attended the Launch for The Coincidence Project last week. It inspired me to recall and write down the profound coincidences I experienced over many years.

But the most ironic coincidence I’ve had so far are the four “coincidences and serendipities” I’ve experienced during this past week. I’m not certain if this sequence will continue – but I’m pretty sure the Launch and discussions opened my consciousness to receive them.

After 5 years of marriage to my wife, her father died. At my father-in-law’s funeral, I met her father’s cousin for the first time. He stood out for me, because I’m a real car enthusiast and I noticed that he drove a burgundy colored Alfa Romeo 159. We didn’t see him again after the funeral.

Seven years later, however, my wife suggested that I join her and her mom at a coffee shop. I accepted the invitation and upon arriving at the coffee shop, I parked my car and was walking through the parking lot. I happened to notice a burgundy Alfa Romeo 159 in the parking lot and I immediately thought about my late father-in-law’s cousin whom I had met only that one time – and I wondered if it was his car, as these cars are not at all common in South Africa; you seldom see them.

As I walked into the coffee shop one minute later, there he was at the table with my wife and her mom. I greeted him and remarked that I just seen his car in the parking lot. Much to my surprise, he said that he had walked to the coffee shop as he lived near by, and that the car I had seen had obviously belonged to someone else. My wife and her mom had just bumped into him at the coffee shop and the meeting was not arranged.

Strange days indeed!

I recently moved to Vermont, and was invited to the cabin in the woods of a friend of a friend from California. My friend’s friend, Lakshmi, was from India, where I lived almost 60 years ago – on the campus of an Institute.

In the course of the evening, we discovered that she had been the little girl next door at that exact home, and was a playmate to my daughter, more than half a century earlier. When Lakshmi’s mother visited just 2 weeks later, we recognized one another immediately, and when my daughter came up to visit, she and Lakshmi knew one another right away — after 60 years.

From Kanpur, India to Brookline, Vermont after half a century! Lakshmi and I are now fast friends.

My coincidence of note occurred in 1996. I was driving from my home in the suburbs to a downtown Atlanta location. I had to drop off a grant application that I wrote for a large, well-known nonprofit. The deadline was at noon that day.

I started out with plenty of time. En route, a driver rear-ended me on I-85. My car was totaled. The Atlanta Police took 30 minutes to get to the scene. On my flip phone, I called the director of the non-profit telling her about the accident and that when the police were finished I would get off the interstate and get a cab. By the time the police did their thing, I was told I had to wait for the tow trucks to come because the driver needed to know where to take the car. By this time I was frantic. It was cold that day and I was frozen. Time went by. The United Way had a hard deadline and at 11:30 I was still at the scene of the accident. I wasn’t going to make it.

Needless to say, traffic backed up all six lanes. It was awful. Then I notice a neighbor and close friend of mine in the traffic, in the lane next to the accident. My friend waited with me, the tow truck came and she drove me to the nonprofit. We got there at 11:55.

Now even this is not the whole story. While my friend and I were en route, she told me that she had been to a morning meeting in the suburbs. The meeting ran late. She got in her car to head into her office downtown, but something stopped her from starting the car. She couldn’t explain what it was, but she felt compelled to eat her lunch in the car. She never ate in her car. She wasn’t hungry.

Then, once she had finished eating, she decided to drive on the interstate — which she rarely did, but she was going to be late for another meeting. It would be faster. No such luck. She became stuck in the horrible traffic caused by my own accident. She dodged in and out of lanes trying to get ahead. She ended up in the lane next to the cars. She saw me standing between the two cars. She pulled up in the lane in front of the cars, got out, and yelled my name.

We couldn’t believe that in a metro area of six million in 1996, she would be there to help me.

To this day, she and I recount how weird the incident was. Why did she feel she had to eat in the car before determining she would take the interstate? Her day and routine were disrupted. She believes that she was compelled to further disrupt the day.

The outcome was that the grant was submitted on time, and the non-profit received all its requested funds. Something odd was at work that day. That’s the true story.

It was February 2019, and my Mom had suffered a stroke. She was resting in the ICU in Cincinnati. I booked the next available flight from Seattle to Cincinnati to be with her; I was at her bedside when we decided to move her into hospice.

We thought she would recover. We doubted the doctors. We prayed with her. We told her stories from our childhood and we stayed by her bedside while she lay nearly unresponsive.

But Mom was there – she was listening to each of us as we held her hand and comforted her with our voices. Mom was holding on strong. She was not ready to leave this world or her husband of 67 years.

A week went by and mom was still hanging on. She was not ready to leave us. The nurses thought she was waiting for someone else. Was it me, or perhaps my wife?

Soon, Mom would send me a sign that we should come home to be with her: it arrived as my wife and I flew out of Seattle back to Cincinnati to be with her. During our flight, I connected to the free WIFI aboard the plane. The system generated a random 5-digit code that must be typed to confirm your session – 4 5 2 2 4 – it was Mom and Dad’s zip code!

I stared in disbelief.

It was Mom! It had to be. She was calling out to me through the computer screen. Mom was communicating with me. She was telling me to come home. What else could explain that “random” number – 45224? That number has been the anchor for our family for the past 60 years. I grew up in that zip code. It is my parents’ home address, their church, and the post office!

The likelihood that a meaningful random number would materialize was rare enough, but the fact we were traveling to that very destination only made it more significant.

At that moment I sensed that Mom was waiting for us to come home and that I would see her and speak to her one last time. But how was this possible?

We drove straight to the hospice center. The room was full of family members, many had been there since early morning. My wife and I went to Mom’s bedside and said our final goodbyes. I held Mom’s hand and told her in a whisper, “I got your message, Mom. I heard you calling for me to come home. 45224. So, I came home to 45224 to be with you,” in the hope that she was listening. I wanted her to know that I received her message.

It was late and everyone was leaving, but my wife wanted to spend more time. We thought that Mom should not be alone, so my wife stayed with her for the night, and I took Dad to our hotel room.

My wife later told me how grateful she was for having that time alone with Mom, and how she spoke to her that evening in the peace and quiet of the now-empty room.

She told Mom it was all right for her to go. That all her children were taken care of, and not to worry about Dad; we were taking care of Dad, so it was okay to let go.

Mom was not alone when she passed in the early morning of February 13, 2019. My wife was by her side.

In my heart I know that Mom sent me a Divine Sign – 45224 – through God – and that she wanted us to be with her one last time. We were grateful for the few precious moments we shared on her last day.

I know it may be a coincidence, but it is too much of a coincidence to explain away. I would rather believe God sent me a message from Mom using the internet. I look forward to more meaningful coincidences as I deal with the loss of my dear Mother.

Rest in Peace Mom
(Sophie Magrino, 4/17/31 – 2/13/19)

Fondest Love and Sweet Kisses
Your son,
Robbie

P.S. — to this day I wonder what number would have appeared if I had hit the refresh button and generated another random 5-digit number.

When my children began going to school in the 1960s, I began writing fiction while they were in class, just for my own satisfaction. I was interested to discover that I was pretty good at it.

One evening at dinner, knowing there was a PTA meeting in the school library that I had no previous intention of going to, I suddenly ‘knew’ I had to go to it – why? I had no idea.

At the meeting there was a woman who was new to town. She had come mostly to meet some of the other parents at the school. Sharing info with her, I learned that her husband was a sales rep. for Scribners publishers in NYC, and that he was interested in work by unknown writers, to send off to an editor in the NY office. Why not? I figured, and showed her some of my work – mostly bits and pieces of this and that. And then I forgot about it until I received a letter from the head editor asking me to complete the “Book” and send it to them. The BOOK?

In short, I wrote “the book” and indeed, it was published the following year as Earth Below, Heaven Above,  starting my lifelong career as a writer. To date, I’ve written and published (not all with Scribners, though) another 16 books – one of which, published in 1994, called Synchronicity: The Anatomy of Coincidence.

Recently, I was thinking about my friend Eli on the bus, looking at license plate numbers. With every car that passed by, I would take the letters on the different license plates and spell Eli in my head. After about 25 minutes of doing this I see a personalized license plate of ‘ELI’.

Another thing that happens to me a lot is that when I am working out, I listen to podcasts while I also count in my head from 1-50 for each set for weights. 90% of the time, the number I am up to in my head will be said at exactly the same time by whatever podcaster is talking.

Busby Berkeley’s first job as a Hollywood musical choreographer was on the film Whoopee! released in 1930. The highly successful film that firmly established his unique reputation was then 42nd Street, released in 1933.

In 2017, my wife and I saw the stage musical version of 42nd Street in London and I then formed the intention of finding Berkeley’s original 1930s films to watch some time, but I left the task a lot longer than intended. In 2023 I finally received in the post a DVD collection of his original films. The postal delivery had been delayed six weeks with the result that it arrived exactly 1930 days after we saw that stage performance in London.

Shortly after watching the DVD of that original 1933 film, we were watching an episode of the TV series Warehouse 13 stored on an old video recorder and the highlight of it was an elaborate Berkeley-style dance routine to the title song of 42nd Street. That episode had also been recorded exactly 1930 days previously in 2017, shortly after we went to see the stage musical based on the same film.

Busby Berkeley was himself a master at exactly timing closely interconnected events, but why did the significant number 1930 occur in both of these incidents? I was age 73 and the video recorder was age 16 at that time near the end of 2017, so the probability of both of us and also the recorder’s essential disk drive containing the recording surviving for another 1930 days was not that high to start with. Also, how often does anyone leave a recorded programme over five years before watching it? Until we watched that episode, we knew of no connection between Berkeley’s films and Warehouse 13 so these two ludicrous coincidences were complete surprises.

You get into your car to go to your weekly club meeting, and your smart phone automatically tells you what route to take and how long it’s going to take to get there (without you entering this recurring destination into the GPS).  Yes, these devices keep track of where you go and when.  Is this artificial intelligence known as AI capable of generating driving coincidences?

With our second marriages, my wife Marie and I have built a beautiful blended family.  Her daughter Sarah and our granddaughter Heather are coming to visit us at our home in Florida.  The morning of their arrival I have a brief dream of their visit before waking up.  Shortly after I get up, Sarah texts me that their flight is on time so I can plan my trip to pick them up from the airport.  After this exchange of texts my phone gives me a photo of the day.  The photo is of Marie, Sarah and Heather together.  Did the texts trigger some recognition in the photo library to post this picture at this moment?  Or was this just a fascinating coincidence?

It’s time to go to the airport. To listen to music on the trip, I turn on my phone to my playlist of 444 songs, which I play in shuffle mode.  The first song that comes up in the shuffle is the one Sarah sang at our wedding some 19 years ago.  I am stunned. There is no electronic linkage between Sarah and this song so it can’t be artificial intelligence.  Is this just another incredible coincidence or was this part of series of coincidences, starting with the dream, that used electronics to deliver a spiritual happening that defies a simple explanation?  Is it created or influenced by artificial intelligence, or not?  I don’t know, but I think my phone knows where I am going tomorrow.

The link here will take you to a short story describing synchronicity events I pursued over years to arrive at something I call “pyramid art”–what I claim is the first-ever discovery in fine art. I say first because I can’t think of another, and it also reveals something no other art can. The story provides evidence for my personal awakening to a timeless dimension whose only possible source–the quantum field–is both imperceptible and 99.99% of reality by volume. Physics states that the universe is a quantum phenomenon. Quantum consciousness has only recently been proposed as a means by which to explain the true nature of Mind. Quantum entanglement reveals a timeless, fifth dimension beyond space-time. My pursuit of synchronicity as an observation technique shows that anyone can tune in to the fifth dimension by picking up the thread of nature’s hive mind, questioning, and following synchronicity as feedback. It can transform our notion of beauty and maybe even save humanity and the planet.

https://www.papolona.guru/pyramid-art/section/76031978/0

Despite being born with his Sun in Pisces, my dad was not a religious man. Far from it–he was a quiet agnostic who read widely on the spiritual affairs of world cultures but wasn’t buying, or even shopping for, a formal creed. He just wanted to know and understand everything, about everything. He was what now might be called a secular humanist, long before that label arose. In fact, he became rather annoyed by my period of preachiness right after I discovered the wonders of mind-altering pharmacopia that opened the doors of perception to a generation in the early 1960s, the attempted suppression of which, like prohibition, tried to throw the baby out with the bathwater. He wisely advised that I tone down my enthusiasm when it might be risking my freedom and get me thrown out with the bathwater, too.

But regardless of his official spiritual ambivalence, he twice found himself–and me–at the heart of unexplainable and deeply meaningful spiritual events, once before and once after his death. The first transpired not long after my harmonica player, Homer, and I nearly found Atlantis off Bimini in 1968 (six months before J. Manson Valentine’s expedition, but that’s another story). I was back in New York City and I woke up to an early morning dream in which I found myself in the upstairs bathroom of my childhood Coconut Grove home, peeing blood. I was terrified, and I was relieved to discover it was only a dream and I was safe in my Manhattan apartment when I awoke. The relief didn’t last long, however, as when I talked to my mom that night on the phone, she gave me the news that my dad had arisen that morning at 6 and had peed blood–in that very bathroom, at exactly the time of my dream–so he was going to see the doctor the next day. That began a long health saga that affected every part of his system and eventually killed him, 10 years later.

After his eventual passing, early on the morning of All Saints Day (a recurring death date in the Townley family) came the second incident. Again, it was just after my return from Florida waters, where this time I had sprinkled his ashes into the sea from a sailboat off Fowey Rocks, that I had a dramatic dream in which my dad appeared. He was seated in the library of the family house in Coconut Grove, but it was well appointed in a way it had never been in real life. His life had been about books (my folks owned the modestly notorious Beekman Place Bookshop on the Upper East Side, hangout of W. H. Auden and other New York poets in the ’30s), but here he was surrounded by elegant, gold-embossed leather-bound volumes, amid massive leather chairs and imposing English antiques. It looked more like the Bodleian Library than my childhood home. What was up?

He explained that he urgently wanted me to know what had happened to him, because it was so amazing and (to him) unexpected–and it was the kind of  thing he knew I was interested in. He said that after he died he went to a terrible place of uncertainty and suffering–he was emphatic about its dreadful quality but not too explicit about the details. He termed it hell, but it seemed more like a sort of purgatory. Then, after that, by the grace of God (his phrase), he was rescued and given this wonderful place to be, to enjoy all the books he could ever want to read and find out everything he ever wanted to know. He was like a perennially thirsty man suddenly given a limitless well to enjoy. I was duly (shall I say, utterly?) impressed, so glad to see him again, and delighted that he was so happy, as the dream faded away.

An exercise in forethought/foreseeing for me developed years ago, when I noticed that every time I would find myself stepping into a dream that I had had usually weeks or even months before, something disastrous would happen later that day. The dreams were not extraordinary, just run-of-the-mill social situations, but they were situations that would lead up to what was going to be a disaster in the later real (non-dream) world, such as sunstroke in one instance, a bad accident in another, and so on.

But once I got the gist of it, I knew if I suddenly seemed to be stepping into a dream I had had, it was time to reconsider my situation and perhaps deflect the imminent disaster. I first used this insight when I was about to deliver a lecture on astrology in New York City. When the dream déjà vu happened just before I went on stage, I went back and rechecked the material I was about to talk about. Sure enough, one of the charts I wanted to display was utterly wrong, which would have made me look like a fool for having used it to prove my lecture points.

Although it was rather central and it was too late to change it, I simply omitted it and danced around the subject from another approach, and it was at least okay and not a humiliation. Since then, I’ve found forewarning to work almost every time. When I walk into a part of a previous dreamscape, I go on alert, double-check my course and surroundings, make big room for error, and brace for potential impact. It has turned a lot of otherwise disasters into thankful near-misses, just by the use of slight sidesteps to avoid something that I had somehow seen coming in my sleep months ago.

In April 1949, I was being conceived into the Fish family. At the same time, Dr. Carl Jung had a series of fish experiences that inspired him to write his famous essay on synchronicity. I read the essay in college, at Amherst, but didn’t notice the dates. Twenty-one years after graduating from medical school, I was encouraged to reread the essay. This time, I saw the dates and realized that Dr. Jung was the missing link in my medical career. I have had a positive reception from the medical profession from the story of my connection to the fish experiences. I also had contact with three people who knew Dr. Jung personally, most importantly my email correspondence with his grandson. I know from these contacts that Dr. Jung would/does in Heaven take my connection to his fish experiences seriously.

Living in India in the 1960s, I wanted to study the bass bamboo flute but was told that such an instrument did not exist. I knew it did because I had heard a recording of one, but where I lived in the Ganges Plain, nobody had heard of it. The local flute maker even made me a set of flutes to demonstrate that such a long flute did not exist.

Months later, taking a walk in Old Delhi, I literally heard the flute playing somewhere nearby, followed the sound, and discovered a young man playing the bass bamboo flute in a garden! I entered the garden, we met, he became my teacher, and a year later, when my family was leaving for home in California, he asked if I could help him come to perform in the US. Of course I said yes but had no idea if or how to ever do such a thing. Almost 2 years passed before I acted on my promise, and one day I knew I had to try.  I phoned a local radio station, told them I had a reel-to-reel tape of this man’s music and asked if they might be willing to put it on the air. It turned out they were searching for something to broadcast at 11 a.m. that day. I went to the station, introduced this man and his wish to perform in America, played the tape, and gave out my phone number. When I arrived home, the phone was ringing: it was somebody on the board of the Ali Akhbar College of Music, nearby, who was looking for a bass flute player for their faculty.

The man who called was the person delegated to find him! He swore that he never turned on the radio at that hour but did that day! And heard that this musician was a genius, and how soon could he come, as the semester started in 2 weeks

Two weeks later, my friend arrived. We picked him up at the airport–he was in shock for the first few weeks–and went on to have a 50-year career of performing and teaching all over the world. He lived with his family 20 minutes from where we lived, and they became part of our family for the next 50 years!

When I was newly married, my husband and I took a bicycle trip from Cork to Dublin in Ireland. We both were working across the Channel in Oxford that year; I was helping to catalog illustrated 12th-century manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. When we came to Dublin that spring, we went to Trinity College where the Book of Kells was on view to the public beneath locked glass, one page of the illustrated manuscript on view each day. I longed to see the whole book, but that of course was not allowed.

“I’m going to ask, anyway,” I told my husband, and I knocked on the office door, to his dismay. The door was answered by the one Irish person I knew, a fellow student from years before at an institute of medieval studies in France! We were astonished to meet again. I told her of my wish to see the whole, precious manuscript; she asked the curator, telling him that I had the right qualifications–which in fact, I did not have–and the next morning I was allowed to see the complete Book of Kells in a private room–as a visiting scholar!

My husband was astonished, but over the years he saw one synchronicity after another happen to me and decided he had married a witch!

In fall 2001, we moved from New Jersey to Indiana after Notre Dame made a great teaching offer to my husband. What with getting our two kids started in a new elementary school, learning my way around a new town, and being riveted by the horror of 9/11 and its aftermath on TV, I hadn’t had time to make new friends or find a new babysitter that first semester. The Sunday before Christmas, my husband got on his exercycle and, 10 minutes later, called out to me to phone for an ambulance. He was in the early stages of a heart attack, which he recognized right off because he’d had one a couple years earlier. The ambulance came and off he went. I was desperate to follow, but what to do about the kindergartener and third-grader? I stood in the kitchen shocked and panicky and trying desperately to think who could watch the kids. The one set of neighbors I had met were out of town. The two academic couples I’d met had already left town for the holiday.  I literally couldn’t think of anyone.

Then the phone rang. A week earlier, we had finally gotten around to posting an ad for a Saturday-night babysitter on the university’s e-bulletin board, but we hadn’t heard from anyone. When I answered, a young woman named Amber said she’d seen the ad and wanted to set up a time for us to interview her. I was so stunned I could barely speak. Finally, I said, “Are you free now by any chance? My husband has just been taken to the hospital with a heart attack, and I really want to get over there.” She gasped sympathetically and said she’d be right over, and 10 minutes later there she was! The kids loved her, she loved them, no interview necessary! It was such a gift! It seemed like a message that help would always be there when I needed it. Amber came for a few hours every day that Tom was in the hospital. She was always very reliable and became our regular sitter until she graduated and got married.

In perhaps another small miracle, after the doctor told me Tom would not be able to be home by Christmas Day, his condition improved enough that the doctor changed his mind at 6:30 Christmas morning. The kids and I had been so sad that he wouldn’t be home for Christmas, but when he called me and said he was being discharged, my joy was mixed. We’d had a major blizzard during the night, snow was a foot and a half deep, and they only had enough plow drivers on Christmas for the major highways. “We had a blizzard and nothing has been plowed–I’m not sure I can get the car through to the hospital,” I said with tears in my eyes. He said not to worry, the hospital was going to send him home in a cab–if they could get one. All I had to do was dig a path from the street to the door and have money to pay the driver. I broke the good news to the kids and, to my relief, they did not whine about shoveling snow before opening presents. They were quite satisfied to wait until their dad was home to do that. So we immediately rushed out with snow shovels and were down to the last few shovelfuls of the path just as some brave taxicab driver with chains on his tires got Tom home–just in time for Christmas breakfast.

Of course, that was what it was. I learned that these are Category Two Synchronicities. What happens is that someone, a very good friend, did die when I saw the birds.

I saw a dead bird outside my garage and also outside my front door within one week.

It is rare for me to see dead birds. I know it happens for a lot of reasons. And  I’ve run across other premonitions with symbols but the timing was special for me.

:March 5, 2023

Just before we arrived home from shopping, we heard a radio commercial for the language app Babbel, which helps people learn a foreign language. The commercial evoked the idea of Babel in my mind. They’re pronounced differently; whatever I think is latent depends on thinking more about it.

The program resumed, but about a minute or two later we unloaded the groceries. About 15 minutes later, I decided to take a look at An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method by Cohen and Nagel, a book suggested to me by a University of Chicago professor whom my cousin chauffeurs from time to time.

I am very interested in synchronicity logic–the technical categorization and quantification. There are many approaches, typologies, morphologies, parameters, attributes, and so on.

We could identify four categorical statements made by Jung that we can use as axioms. From those we can conclude one universal affirmative propositional statement.  I chose this book to help comprehend what it is that I am trying to work on.

I did not want to arbitrarily see what it said. I just wanted to start at the preface. I just got this book because  the last one I got was so musty that I could not open it without gagging and coughing. In any case, in the first paragraph, it read, ” … there is a bewildering Babel of tongues as to what logic is about.”

A coworker of mine originally from India related that as a teenager he wanted very much to go to college at the University of Southern California (USC) and therefore planned to take the requisite exams to apply for American universities. But the day of the exam his car broke down. He got a ride to take the train but all cars were packed as there was a transportation strike. He tried to rent a car or hitch a ride, but this took so much time that once he finally arrived at the test site, the exam was in progress and he had only 15 minutes left to do the 2-hour exam. He did the best he could but he failed to pass. He felt it was ruining his future for so many things to go wrong. He did his undergraduate studies in India, and after that he landed a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Southern California, and so was able to get his visa to come to America. After a few years he found that JPL would let him go back to college and get a higher degree. The college program was at USC. So he ended up doing what he had aimed to do. I asked him if there was any difference that was positive in doing the degree later? Yes, he said. If he had been accepted earlier, his parents would have had to pay his USC college tuition. By going via the JPL program, JPL paid. So the “bad luck” was actually good luck, as it saved his parents (who were not wealthy) from having to pay those college expenses.

In 1948 at age 14, Vera ran away from home to New York City. Her strict Mennonite parents highly restricted her life, not allowing movie-going and other activities most young people of the time enjoyed. Once in the big city, Vera got a social security card but couldn’t get hired because she looked too young. One night she decided to stay in an all night movie theater at Radio City Music Hall on Broadway and 42nd street. One man seated near her asked to “take her to dinner,” but she began to realize his motives when he put a hand on her knee. Vera rebuffed him and left her seat, then saw an older woman sitting alone in the back of the theater. She asked if she could talk to the woman and confessed she left home. The woman took her to the street corner to speak to a policeman who might help her reconnect with her family, since the woman said they must be worried about her. As Vera was taken under the constable’s wing, a clock struck 9 p.m.

Meanwhile in Allentown, PA, her parents were meeting that night with their pastor at their home. They had called him to ask for his help praying for their missing daughter’s return. As they knelt in prayer, the pastor finished his intercession and said, “She is safe now.”  The time was 9 o’clock, Vera later learned, when she was indeed safely in the company of the kind policeman.

Many coincidences slip by me.

A few years ago we enjoyed a tour for seniors hosted by Kendall County, IL near the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. . On a patch of government land was a bomb shell factory displaying papers, actual bomb shells, instruments, and suchlike that gave us a sense of being there. After completing the tour, the bus driver guide asked if we wanted go back (we were seniors) or if we could handle going up about a half-mile or so up another dirt road to see some tree that had a story.

We chose the tree. Turns out that they discovered some “body with no name” there. I’m not sure what the whole story was, as interesting as it was, and we finished our tour. That was Tuesday.

Thursday evening after dinner my better half, Joanne, decided that we should watch a CD. Out of maybe four dozen stacked neatly under the coffee table we chose The Complete First Season Newhart, a hilarious 1982 sitcom.

This episode was about finding a body with no name in the basement. Joanne and I started to wonder, “That sounds familiar. Why does it sound familiar?” We remembered that just a couple of days on the tour, the same thing happened.

I had done remote coaching for an organisation in Tunisia. When finished I had a debriefing call with a (for me unknown) coordinator of PUM, who did the matching with me and Tunisia. At the end of our call he said, suddenly, “You live somewhere in the north of the Netherlands, don’t you?” Yes, i replied. Then he told me he was going to visit an old friend in the north with whom he used to work in Africa. His friend just moved to a new house, bought from an old lady, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It did not take long  for me to discover he was talking about my new neighbor!

The reason for his visit was the big premiere of a theater play my neighbor organized. I had in vain been trying to buy tickets online for one of the other evenings. “Call your neighbor now, there must be place tonight,” the coordinator said. And so, that evening we found ourselves sitting next to each other by coincidence with our VIP free tickets at this wonderful show!

We ended up discovering a whole range of coincidental mutual friends !

One day several years ago I received a note from a stranger, asking if he might learn about my work with sound and healing. He arrived for the session with an armload of papers for me, on the subject of sound, which had, among them, a few articles from the Princeton Energy Anomalies Research group, PEAR. As I have a son who teaches at Princeton, I brought those papers along the next time I visited. I contacted the PEAR research group when I was there, met the folks, and made a strong connection with Brenda Dunne, who shared the running of the organization. We looked alike, thought alike, and became good friends, eventually working together within the publishing arm, ICRL (Institute for Consciousness Research), which brought out two of my books. We named ourselves the Eastern Witch and the Western Witch, as I lived in California when we met, and magic always seemed to happen around us.

But the coincidences do not stop there, as Brenda died this year before my third book came out, and her son Jeff Dunne took over the press and ICRL. He recently offered a talk on Zoom to members that featured a marvelous speaker from India, Rahul Gotswami, who talked about the indigenous mind and the importance of embracing indigenous ways of thinking and living, something I wholeheartedly embrace.

I have, in the past, lived in India, so I asked him where he lived and taught–and it was the same place I had lived and my husband taught at! A campus in the Ganges Plain most people have never heard of (IIT Kanpur). Adding one more synchronicity to that, I met here in Vermont a woman, Lakshmi, who had grown up on the IIT campus, right next door to us! She was my 5-year-old daughter’s best friend! (They finally met again here, mature and beautiful women, just a few weeks ago, and it was a joyous reunion!)

Her mother came to visit shortly after that. We recognized each other immediately even though it had been 60 years since we’d last seen each other, and many happy tears were shed. I would not be surprised if someone in the Coincidence Project may also be part of this story!

One more thing: The books of mine published by ICRL may be of interest to this group:

In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Around the World

Worldshift Happens: Facing Down the Fear, Waking Up the Mind

Freeflow Stories: Musings on the Passing Scene

I had just finished a meditation weekend retreat that was wonderful as well as relaxing. We played with colors.  And the one color that was highlighted was magenta.  We used magenta in our meditations.

I traveled home from the retreat and was tired after the long flight.  My husband had gone shopping in my absence for some new mugs. He had them on the table.  I looked one of them over, flipped it upside down to see where they had been made, and in big dark letters saw the label “MAGENTA”!

I have noticed that many times I depend upon news headlines to help determine what I was doing on that date.

For example, on Saturday, July 20, 1974,  when Turkey invaded Cyprus.

My uncle “G” had owned a couple of Shell gas stations and sponsored a baseball team in Chicago.

I played only one day on the team at a ballpark on 31st Street just west of Pulaski, across the street from  Home Run Inn Pizza. I don’t believe I hit any home runs.

This might not seem like much, but these “landmarks” appear to be sort of  a “watermark” etched over reality,   as if a record of our mental and physical whereabouts while on Earth are part of a set director’s inventory list.

During an eclipse, the moon perfectly coincides with the sun.

This is just a coincidence, an exception. The size of the two objects and their relative distance are not correlated; indeed, millions of years ago the moon was closer and it will be further away.

in the universe billions of billions of planets may have satellites, but very few of them could project a mask, like the moon now.

This had to be the first half of the 1970s. Curiously, I had asked a group of friends if it was okay to record while we just sat and talk. We soon forget it was on.

Perhaps a few days later, maybe a week, the friends were over again, and as we started talking, the player with the past recording was turned on. At the time, the recording gave us all a spooky feeling because the pauses and words seemed to participate as present participants responding live and ad hoc.

Although the incident involved a small close group and our parameters of knowledge and discussions may have been limited to our own concerns, this “experiment” seemed to extend beyond that gauge.

Which comes down to other phenomena. Objects, especially electronic media gadgets, may suggest coincidences, carrying information sometimes from the past even if the actors are dead. Movies and/or live broadcasts appear as if participating in our mental and physical whereabouts with uncanny attention to detail.

I am not good at chemistry nor science and math. Most of my comprehension about the nature of reality appears to involve a world beyond physical objects. That is not to suggest that we are not real because we do feel. For me the right to claim existence is very important.

But whether or not “nature” and/or our concept of nature, responds to us, I don’t know. During a chemistry class the instructor was going over the “octet rule” [the theory that atoms tend to have eight electrons in their valence shell]. This must have been February 10, 1983.

I had already started and completed a sonnet with names of countries and people and was more or less finding out if the process had something to do with the octet rule. I started to write,  “Share on Share own Sharon Octet Rule.” (See “Thinking Earth Sonnet.”)

On February 11, 1983, the newspaper headlines announced that Israeli politician Ariel Sharon had resigned from a position. His name plays a part in the sonnet as well, in a “sharing of heaving and earth” theme.

But as if the physical reality were to mimic the same theme, later Sharon becomes a minister of construction and housings overseeing a comprehensive expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  This is an ironic twist in the “sharing” element.

The first coincidence I remember had a weird, ominous sort of meaning. It was in the early 1950s, when I was a grammar school kid.

I remember crying because I sat on a tall chair facing the corner of two walls and was wearing a dunce cap. My cousin Mary Lou was staring at me from outside the classroom. Maybe she had been notified about something but I never found out.

After that day,  I remember not going to that school. It had burned down and we were forced to attend another school. The church and school that burned down had a common church name, “Sacred Heart.” Christians most likely have seen a prayer card on which Christ Jesus is depicted with a “fiery” Sacred Heart. It was not until decades later that I made a connection between the fire and the icon in the prayer card. I admit the “profound” psychological impact it had is subjective.

Sometime during my teens, around the mid 1960s, three friends and I decided to go to the lake.

The water was still as we sat at the edge, enjoying the warm yet refreshing breeze and philosophizing a bit.

Each of my friends turned out pretty well. Frank, for instance, became mayor of a California city. His father was something like an ambassador at the time, and his mother was the head librarian at a Washington DC hospital. They lived next door to my family in Sleepy Hollow (an official neighborhood in Chicago).

But young and free, just joking around, we might blurt out crazy things like, “what would happen if the lake just grabbed us and carried us away?” Just as one of us said it, from that calm lake emerged a big wave that seemed to fiercely rush at us. And as if a bunch of loving angels filled the atmosphere, we were just as swiftly reassured that something prevented us from being dragged in. The lake again was calm, and we experienced another simple appreciation of nature.

It must have been around the middle to latter half of the 1980s.  At a little after 2 a.m., a knock at the side door woke me,  and I found out it was Tony  B.

The bars close at 2, and now Tony says he is really tired and that he can still work in the morning but just wants to sleep.  I reluctantly let him in. He found a spot on a roll of padding.  I on the other hand was awake, and the only thing open was a White Castle.  I told him I was going to get a couple of hamburgers and asked him if he wanted a bite to eat, but he said no, I’m ok.

As I was about to go out the side door, I bowed my head, asking for some kind of sign. I forgot about it, and opened the door. It was the second year of a drought, and I looked up att he clouds filling the entire sky and wondered, ‘Will it train?’  I stepped down to a concrete landing and closed the door behind me. After another step down to open the gate at sidewalk level, I looked up and wondered again, ‘Will it rain?’  I had no idea.

Just as I closed the gate on the sidestreet sidewalk, what appeared to be a headlight beam on the other side of the clouds from the west headed toward my direction.  At first I thought it must be a low-flying plane from Midway Airport, about 5 miles away.  Even perhaps a helicopter, but there was no sound.  But as I stepped down on the street to cross, I noticed that an opening appeared at 11 o’clock from my position.

My first thought was that I could now see where that light was coming from.  So, already in the middle of the street, I moved about a car length to the left, to stare through.

It was the moon.  But at least I could see the dark sky and the stars. The city lights could not obstruct the view.   After perhaps a few moments of appreciation, I realized I was standing in the middle of the empty street.

Just as I had turned again to step up on the curb, a very bright light filled the street at Archer Avenue and Elias Court. Instinctively I turned to look at the opening, but now as if it had been abruptly edited, it was a perfectly shaped translucent silvery white cross.  From my view, the cross appeared just above and behind the four-story apartment building on Elias.

I stood and asked myself, ‘Am I seeing this?’ I had seen a lot of crosses in my life by that time, and none could compete. A fluorescent fixture hanging there, very large

I am still doubting but realize I am seeing it.  Superlatives flew through my my mind–“commanding” and so on–and again, after what might have been 20 seconds or maybe  half a minute, it was still in the middle of the street. I continued to stare.  As if it were coming from behind, another beam, thinner and less bright, seemed to be about to pass through the cross. For some reason, perhaps still struck by awe, I became frightened that that light was about to shine on me as a sort of spectacle.

I quickly hurried to the front of the apartment building and decided to turn my head around to look up. The cross was still there!  But that other light beam did not hit the spot where I was standing. It touched the steeple of one of the two churches on the other side of the dead-end street. It was the one in direct line with the street,

About 10 years or so later, my business grew and I had acquired an account with the largest Chinese realty in Chicago. They had been successful at usually getting more than property owners were asking in Bridgeport surrounding Chinatown. Now, as I am visiting the area, I am just south of the Archer-Elias Intersection and want to find out which church would line up. On 31st I found the two churches about a block or two from each other, and then I figured out the one that the beam of light had pointed to. The sign in front of it read, “Monastery of the Holy Cross.”

When I began experiencing synchronicities in the 1980s–which, not knowing any better, I called “parallel situations”–they often cued me to something about to happen. Once I thought I saw a nearby car crash while driving on interstate 10, but then realized I was mistaken even as the fright it gave me didn’t subside very quickly. I wondered if a real accident was imminent, so I paid close attention to cars around me. Not too much later, the car in front of me had its left tire blow out, but I was ready. I slowed, turned my hazard lights on, and stayed behind the car until the driver got into the left shoulder. I felt I had done my part, as the driver could now safely fix the tire or use the call box from there.

Similarly, on the day before Thanksgiving, I was again driving on interstate 10 and could not get around a tour bus in front of me due to heavy traffic  I started to wonder if I was stuck there for a purpose, when I realized this bus had a glaring typo in its branding letters. The bus was from Scenic Bus Tours, which operate all over New Orleans, but this bus said SCCNIC BUS in huge block print on the back. What a mistake, I thought. How did someone not fix this? Then I wondered what huge mistake have I made, that this bus is “telling me” about.  I had been thinking that I had everything at home to make Thanksgiving dinner. Had I forgetten something? I reviewed again what I had at home and realized I had no breadcrumbs. I could still stop at the store and get them. Just then, a lane opened up that allowed me to pass the SCCNIC bus. I was so thrilled I waved at the bus as if to thank it. I turned up the radio and enjoyed the moment. As my exit approached, suddenly the SCCNIC bus passed me! It then dawned on me:  I had passed the supermarket exit–and again forgotten to stop for those breadcrumbs! I detoured to another market and got that essential ingredient for a turkey dinner.

When my daughter, Rachel, was about six years of age, we arranged to go on holiday to France with friends who had two young children. We had a four-berth caravan and a tent that slept six. The friends were to borrow our tent. As we lived in the Midlands and they were travelling from Dorset, we arranged to meet them at the port, prior to taking the boat over the Channel. 

 We drove down overnight and stopped in a lay-by for an early morning breakfast. The tent was in the caravan, and, as was our custom, we took it out and put it under the caravan to give us room inside.  Whilst we were eating, a minibus pulled up behind us. I realised that my daughter was paying them a lot of attention out of the window, and saw that one of them was relieving himself close to our van. I closed the curtains, telling Rachel to get on with her breakfast. When we had finished, we went to fetch the tent, to find it had gone. The young men had apparently not only relieved themselves but had relieved us of our belongings! This put us in a fairly dreadful situation. Our friends were dependent on us for their accommodation. We were none of us well off in those days and could not afford to either buy another tent nor pay for alternative accommodation. The caravan was hardly big enough for us, far less sleep four additional people. 

At our wit’s end, we decided we might as well go to the campsite we were booked onto, as there seemed no better alternative. When we reached there, I asked the person at reception whether she knew of anywhere we could hire a tent very cheaply, as ours had just been stolen. The woman gave us a strange look and said we were in luck. A family had left the day before and had given her their tent prior to leaving. Apparently they were to buy a new tent for their next holiday and would have no use for their old one. They thought she might be able to find someone who would have use for it. The woman had not had this happen to her before and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it; so when we turned up, she was glad to have it taken.  That was coincidental enough, but the real shock came when we saw the tent.  Ours was about 20 years old, blue and orange with two sleeping compartments, good quality but well worn with two or three tears in different places. This tent was virtually identical: same age, colour, size, condition–to all intents and purposes, the same tent.  It wasn’t ; the tears were in different places.  But if you didn’t know the other tent as we did, and put the two together, you couldn’t have told the difference. We were staggered.   

I remember vividly thinking that if I had doubted there being a Power that lay behind our daily experience, I should not do so again. The whole thing just seemed to go far beyond the bounds of meaningless coincidence.   

:

In 1981, the idea of composing a sonnet using only names of places and people started with a draft. Each name had to have some kind of ironic sense, and the ideas expressed would have some philosophical, if not theological, significance. There should be a general acausal order, but with the iambic style. The cross-connections of names would become as if they were expressing what the planet was thinking and articulating through this symbolic language.

By 1983, each of the 14 lines was in iambic pentameter with the classic rhyme format. As the years and decades passed, the world at large seemed to reflect the same themes. For example, the phrase “IQrackow Pole Boot Argentina” for my subjective intent and knowledge, would involve manifold references: Iraq, Krakow (Poland), the Polish Pope, Boot for Italia (Italy), and the “shoes of the fisherman” with an ironic intent; “Argentina” did reflect a expectation that the cardinal from Argentina would become Pope.

It did not happen that way. Instead, Pope Benedict (meaning ‘the Good Word’) was chosen.  I suppose it was disappointing for me. I actually believed for all the effort that it was the Word of the Holy Spirit moving the world.

I did complain by questioning the Spirit, Why should I have written it thus if it were not true; itis no longer the Truth. As if radioactive decay were occurring, at that inevitable given moment to appoint the time and place, there was news that a lightning bolt had struck the Vatican and that Pope Benedict had announced his retirement. He had lived rather lavishly, and I had wondered if the lightning were some kind of nature’s expression about what a holy cosmic act is when judging our Vatican stage.

The vote to install the cardinal from Argentina also came with a remarkable coincidence.  A seagull landed on the chimney when the pope named after St. Francis was chosen.

At the completion of the poem,  the Russian Andropov and American Ronald Reagan were in office. So, when the line “Andropov Stalin Khrushchev” appeared to mirror the fall of the Berlin Wall, I felt another sense of the world as a whole.

At  one time there were remarks on public radio about how thinktanks can choose a poem by a carpenter and rally around it. I suppose that I took that kind of rationale for how the poem expressed itself.

In the late 1980s, a friend, Pat, and I were still attached enough to our college-town hairstylist in Columbia SC that we’d drive an hour and a half from our new city, Charlotte NC, to get our hair cut. The stylist’s name was Blake.

One day I decided to take up another college friend’s offer to visit him in New York City, where I’d never been. So I flew to New York for a weekend and saw the usual sights. One night we were hanging out in Greenwich Village, browsing stores. In a trinket shop, I heard my name, looked up, and beheld Blake, who’d apparently traveled to New York on a whim.

The situation got more interesting when I returned home to find my friend Pat fuming. Before I could tell her about my trip, Pat ranted that she’d driven all the way to Columbia for an appointment with Blake, who’d called in sick without notice.

I was in a unique position to rat him out.

This kind of coincidence involves “books, ” as the Latin phrase suggests. I seem to have relied upon some of these coincidences without trying to get carried away.

It is remarkable how sometimes we can be wondering and asking about ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ is, and somehow something or a person carries the information as if to answer. The “messenger” might not be consciously aware that they are figuring in this play.

Perhaps a couple of dozen, probably lots more, that I personally have had the privilege to experience.  Some are simply amazing.

I’ve had where just as I had a question, arbitrarily opened a book, and read the first page “wherever the book has opened” (Ad Aperturam Libri), that not only did I find that particular statement relevant, but also the radio had appeared to echo a phrase. On at least a few occasions, a light beam from the moon, the sun, or another passing light shone exactly on the spot, at the same time. It feels as if it is part of a coherent light all converging and locking in.

Each becomes an element in the set to increase the “degree.”

Writer Arthur Koestler calls these book coincidences “library” or “angel” types.

My better half, Joanne, chihuahua Oreo, and myself, the driver, headed from Yorkville Il to Wood Dale, Il, about an hour’s drive. I decided to listen to an audiobook, One Second After, by William R. Forstchen, an interesting guest on the “Coast to Coast” morning radio program.

Joanne does not like to think about doom and gloom, so I needed to turn down the sound, low enough for her to talk when she felt like it. I decided to go east on the Illinois 88 tollway and use the 355 tollway north and get off at North Avenue (Illinois 64).

As we approached the North Avenue exit ramp, something occurred in the story at 53 and 64. I just shrugged off the 64 thing, but interestingly, the tollway 355 is the new Illinois 53.

After we got off and turned right, the next light was at old route 53. When the red light turned green and I was crossing 53, the CD just stopped playing. The player light was still on. I started pushing buttons–forward, rewind, stop–and gave up.  After about a half minute, it just started again where it left off!

But that was not the end of it.  We were about three-quarters of the way to our destination. Now we had to go to Wood Dale Road, about 10 or 15 minutes down North Avenue, and turn left.

As we made the turn, the story now involved two towns arguing about water rights.

A few minutes later, the younger daughter and the father were looking for Elizabeth, the older daughter. They continued talking about Elizabeth as we came up to the next street with a traffic signal.

There we stared straight at the yellow street sign, “Elizabeth.”   And as I had a feeling,  I stopped,  lowered my window, and stuck my neck out to look straight down the street on my left. Just then the little sister said,  “That’s Elizabeth.”

One day I was sitting and looking at a “How to Draw” book. It was “garbage day,” so I put the book down and took the cans out to the street. At the time, the subdivision was not complete and seemed desolate.

No one was outside. I positioned the two cans next to the curb and started to walk away back to the house.

I noticed a piece of cardboard in the street, so I picked it up, walked back, and put it into the can.

As I was putting the lid down, another piece of cardboard flew into my hand (pneuma again). I  was just going to drop it into the can too and walk back, but I thought maybe I should read what it said. It was the empty box for an art easel.

Two of us were doing a residential carpet job across the street from St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church near 24th and Western in Chicago.

As usual, we were being thanked as we left. But this time, they were really pleased with Bob.

At the door ready to walk out, I found out that Bob had found a $100 bill when we moved a dresser to do a room. Evidently he asked the customer about it, and they were happy. As we walked out, the church bells started ringing. I thought it was maybe on the hour, but it did seem appropriate. When I asked Bob what time it was, he said it was about 10 minutes after 2. He felt special.

Sometime during the 1970s I sat at a card table in the middle of a room about 12 by 12 feet with the door closed. I was trying to figure out what some words meant. Atop the table was an opened Webster Unabridged Dictionary, a few other books, some pages, and some article written by Minkowski about his multidimensional world point spiral as it can be visualized through a simplistic filmlike universe.

As I sat studying, a heard a buzz.  I wondered what it was and realized that up above to my left was a tiny mosquito.

I was just about content to accept the source to resolve my question, when the mosquito simply glided down, as if it on a mechanical spiral, to land on the dictionary. I did not want to swat the mosquito but was curious.  It had landed inside the definition of onomatopoeia, on the example “tinkle, buzz.”

I’ve had my share of coincidences working most of my life on my knees installing carpets and other floor coverings. This one time, after cutting a couple of pieces of carpet, maybe one about 14 feet and another 29 feet, I laid both out on the floor.

The first carpet started against an east wall and ran from the north to south wall in the living room. The second piece had to line up with the first so they could be seamed together.  This piece was longer in order to avoid a seam between the living room and the hallway.

Once the carpet was adjusted to make sure I had enough overhang, a couple of inches to trim the seams, I just needed to get rid of a few inches from one side of the second piece and maybe six feet wide on the other because it was going to drop down a 4-foot-wide hallway.

After the carpet was rolled, lined up, and folded so that the back could be cut to drop into the hallway and there was enough to meet the floors in the bedrooms and doorways, I was ready to cut.

I usually follow a “groove” in the backing of the carpet when cutting the length.  I choose one and just do it. This time I was making sure to measure more than once, and I noticed that what looked like a blue ink pen line drawn not even a quarter inch on my tolerance of a half inch that helped me just cut it out, drop it in, and finish the job.  Coincidences like these save a lot of time and effort.

I had one dog, Dante, that I adopted a year after my 13-year-old dog Terry passed away in 1995. I began looking at SPCA listings of dogs in late 1997, thinking of maybe getting Dante a companion.  In early 1998 I saw a listing for a Sheltie and mentioned it to my boyfriend. We went down to see the dog and ended up looking through the entire kennel.

One dog I began to focus on looked interesting. As I stared at her, she seemed to realize I could be the one to get her out of there and she got very excited. We brought her home and immediately she had chemistry with Dante.

But as she walked into the house, she approached me with her ears flat, which made her look like old Terry. She and Terry had the same gold coloring, and because of that I named her Amber. Her papers said she was picked up on the street on December 15, 1997. I had had a dream about Terry a few months prior and so checked my journal to see if it was around that time. The day before she was found, I had this dream: “Terry runs and jumps into trunk of my car, he wants to go along. He has to stay there, tho. I carry him in my arms. He’s scared, and as big as Dante. I hold him on my lap.” Amber was indeed as big as Dante. Was Amber actually Terry? Whatever the case, I was searching the rescue dog ads for some reason, and it appeared I found what I was looking for. Dante and Amber both lived 16 happy years.

I moved to LA from New Orleans with my dog Terry, a sheltie-corgi mix. By 1995, Terry was having problems walking due to age and could not get up by himself after lying down. By November, on a Sunday, he began coughing in a disturbing way. At the vet, they said he had heart failure. I decided it was time to put him to sleep.

Afterward, I left the vet shell shocked. Once home, friends came over to take me to the Doo Dah Parade. I forgot about them coming. I didn’t want to go, but what else was I going to do? So I went to the parade with them.

Once at the parade, we sat down at a corner where the different participants stopped to do their skit or show. One group came up and reenacted the death of Julius Caesar. I suddenly thought, did Terry think I betrayed him by putting him to sleep? I killed him like the senators killed Caesar. But at that moment a participant raised up a sign that said, “STOP!” It startled me. Then she flipped the sign over and it said, “Thank You. Now Move on.”  It was someone giving directions to the participants. I was seeing the back of the sign.

I immediately felt that the messages were from Terry. He was saying, “Stop feeling that way! I am grateful. Now move on and be happy.” I told my friends that Terry just spoke to me, but of course they didn’t believe me.

I was working a Memphis, TN job that had just finished up and I was packing my belongings in my truck, going back and forth from the room I had rented to my truck. On one trip, I happened to notice a business card laying on the ground. I picked it up and saw the name ‘Dave Smith’ printed on it, and it was from the company I had just been employed with.

I finished packing and hit the road. Flash forward 1-2 hours, I’m traveling on I-40 heading home, not really paying much attention to anything, I look up and find myself ‘trapped’ behind a 18-wheeler with a whole ‘freight train’ of vehicles in the other lane. Nothing I could do but wait for an opening to go around the truck in front of me. I glance around and happened to notice the rear doors of the truck in front of me on which was printed “Expect something special from Smith”.

I finally arrived home, too late for supper, but noticed a very nice aroma coming from the oven. I ask my wife what she was cooking and she replied ‘apple pie’. Not really liking apple anything, I finished unpacking then joined her at the TV about the time her pie finished cooking. She got herself a slice and suggested I do the same, to which I declined. A bit later she said it was delicious and I should try a bite. I did so and she was correct: it was great. I asked her if she had made that pie to which she said no she had bought it. I ask her the brand. she said ‘Mrs Smith’.

At this point I wish to ask a question. I have had numerous events of this sort and I have always wondered:  how is it possible being Synchronicity is a fact, which I know unquestionably it is, how is it possible for Synchronicity and ‘Free Will’ to co-exist? If anyone has an answer I would love to hear it.

During a drive, my life partner Joanne was reminiscing about her first job as part of a high school coop. This is the short version of her story:

As diligent and responsible as anyone, she still made a mistake and was called on it by a supervisor. It meant that her job was in jeopardy because it was a significant problem.  The owner was informed by the supervisor, but realized she could still be valuable. Thankfully, the man who had hired her for the job therefore kept her on.  She was told, “All you have to do is ask.”

About a minute or two after she tells me this story, we are a mile up the road and pass an industrial building with a large sign that was painted on the side of the building, that read, “All you have to do is ask.”

This happened maybe a year after the release of the movie “E.T.” A personal business issue led to a confrontation between myself and Bob, in a courtyard between three apartment buildings. A set of sheds for storage blocked the back, except for a door that ran through the passage between the sheds, that led to the alley.

That day, it was cold, the falling snow was sticking to the ground, with a topping of ice. Bob, to whom I was teaching the carpet trade, had a hammer and as we faced off over our conflict I asked, “Are you going to hit me with that hammer?”

Just as he was about to answer and/or make his move, we heard the alley door swing open, with a sound like it was playing the tune from “E.T.”

We stared at each other, and then nodded, confirming we had both heard it, and then the door did it again, playing the same tune!

That was enough to break the ice, and we were okay again. We figured out that the door had been opened by the wind, and as it rubbed against the hard snow, between the creaking and squeaking of the door, it created a sound just like in the movie, and that was funny.

As absurd as one can imagine when playing around with using personal pronouns as if they are regular vocabulary words, this occurred when the senior George H. W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States.

I think it was around the Noriega ousting when I toyed with other poetic phrases that sounded like the names of physical geographical locations and persons. That day, I wrote without thinking:

WATT INDIA BAGHDAD

Uzno Watt Amin

The next day, twice on PBS, former President Bush said, “There’s nothing in the bag.”

It must have been between 1980s – 1990s. Dolly, my friend Joe’s mother-in-law  was managing a carpet store on 34th place and Western Avenue in Chicago.   She turned out to be a very good  friend, as well. Mondelli Carpets was the name of the business and catered almost invariably to a higher end by appointment.  Typically, when I needed to stop there, I would say, “Hi or Hello” to her daughter Lynn, Joe’s wife, or Dolly.

This day, Dolly was behind the counter watching her TV when I opened their front door. After the bell stopped and the door closed, I called out “Hello Dolly” that sounded like a echo of the TV, that was playing the same phrase in an ad, “Hello Dolly.”

One day, a few years ago my husband made a joke about the Hollywood actor The Rock.  I had never heard of him and thought I would google him later to see what such a strangely named person looked like.  I then took my computer to be mended in a part of town I don’t normally go to.  The repair shop wasn’t open yet, so I decided to get a coffee in a nearby cafe.  It was a really nice cafe and for some reason I found myself wondering who owned it and asked one of the wait staff. I googled his name and the search engine returned a picture of the Hollywood actress Florence Pugh who (I discovered) was the proprietor’s daughter.  And standing next to her was…The Rock!

I was in a new relationship with someone but we had to be apart for a few days. During this time I was out on a a walk and noticed that I had started singing the Paul Simon song ‘Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes’ and wondered what had prompted me to start singing it.  A few minutes later I texted the person I was seeing and on a whim added a shamrock emoji at the end, not really knowing why.  On receiving the text he told me that he was surprised to see the shamrock as he was wearing a pair of golf shoes that a friend had given him that had shamrocks embedded in the soles of the shoes. I had no idea that he owned such a pair of shoes.

Note of interest: I was just pondering whether to post this story when I received an email from my brother who I was arranging to meet somewhere between both our houses.  He suggested a golf club (neither of us play golf) so I have taken that as a sign that I should post!

My stepfather had passed just before my parent’s Sleepy Hollow house was up for sale.  They had purchased another house a couple of miles further south, two blocks north of Midway Airport in Chicago near Archer Avenue and Cicero Avenue where they planned to move.

It was a situation where I was somewhat estranged from the family and had been put into a “house sitting” position. The first day, after I moved in during the first half of the 1990s, I had time to relax, sit atop my car in the garage, and stare across the alley at a prairie yard that filled between the railroad tracks and a printing business. It was time to lay back and read.

For some reason, the book at hand was a 1964 book, The Conscious Mind written by Kenneth Walker. In 1971, the teacher of my Introduction to Logic class was also named Kenneth Walker (same name, but not the same person as the author).

As I was reading, behind my mother’s 2nd house, I started to doze off, and the last thing I remember before putting the open book face down on my chest was,

“The mind ‘bloweth where it listeth’.  Instead of remaining silent as we wish them to remain
during contemplation, our lower associative minds, or what the Hindu calls ‘manas’,
continue their ceaseless chatter about totally irrelevant matters.  We may manage to
interrupt this mechanical flow of talk but a new theme immediately presents itself,
and off ‘manas’ goes again, like a dog after a rabbit” (The Conscious Mind, p 145).

I’m not sure, perhaps 10 minutes or so later, as I was still resting, I started to feel something wet on my right cheek.  A second or so and I realized there is a big dog leaning over the side of my car licking my face. Then someone comes from the alley and yells at the dog and the dog goes off and the man said,  “I’m sorry, he’s a greyhound, he went after a rabbit.”

I said,  “Look at this.” And pointed at the line in the book that reads “like a dog after a rabbit.” He said, “Wow, that’s a coincidence!”

That was the first time I met my neighbor Tony.

This story happened around 1997/1998 when Phillips introduced their first CD Recorder for public market. I was working a computer show at McCormick Place for Czarnowski Exhibits.  The show used up all three buildings, and lower levels. I wanted to visit the Phillips booth and so did my friend Pete, who was getting excited about computers.

We agreed to meet for lunch at the Phillips booth to get some literature.  But I got trapped at my booth all day (in another building) and could not let Pete know, as we did not yet have cell phones. I knew he would realize something changed and would just get the info on his own.

About 2 o’clock or so, we were finishing up. The last thing that comes up from a booth is the carpet. So I knelt down, stretched my arm to lift the carpet, and I was in a position to watch the large back dock opening with heavy plastic curtains being forced inward by a strong gust of wind. I stared, as all over the convention hall papers started flying, spiraling, hundreds of thousands, as I watched surprised, still with my hand opened to lift up the carpet– and then some piece of paper hit my palm, and I instinctively closed my hand.

Of all the thousands of papers and bits of litter flying with the wind, the one that flew into my hand was about the Phillips CD Recorder. But that was not all!  As we were waiting for the final check out from the boss, another fellow named Jimmy comes up to me, and says, “You know about these kind of things.”   I looked at what he was holding out to me. He said, “One of the clients used this for demonstration.”   I asked, “Was it Phillips?” As if I knew.

He said, “No, it’s another client, but they can’t use it again because it has a dent. I wonder if you can use it.” I confirmed that Jimmy didn’t want to keep it for himself (he didn’t).

And that was how I got my first Phillips CD recorder.