Mirroring the Synchronic

Synchronicity, as a concept of awareness, has raised its head time and again lately.

If one were foolish or optimistic, one might believe that an increase of synchronicities was a signal that you are on the "right path". Well, for the skeptics, all I can say is ... pffsssst!

Yesterday during my annual eye exam [5 years since my cataract surgery], I greeted my talented ophthamologist, Michael Lamensdorf, MD, in a normal off-the-wall inquiry, "Why do I always feel good when I see you?" I asked.

This intensely connected and serious man responded with a short lecture that traveled from fondness for each other to an explanation of how recent research had mapped mirroring neurons in the human eye.

I had just read about the mirroring neurons thanks to a posting in a Face Book Group I have joined (THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS ) . So, my ophthamologist and I were on the same path, dipping into the same information stream a bit synchronistically.

 I had read about, Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD recently. (My PhD Dissertation, years ago, entailed a Cognitive Approach to the Study of Environmental Perception.) We have been discussing mirroring strategies for healing in the Face Book Group. 

And so, this awareness of mirroring has begun take on a life of its own. The attractive thing about synchronic connections is that they arrive so easily, without effort, almost as if a guardian angel had just whispered into your ear. 

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Note to Myself

Do not mistake the googling and twitting and electronic droolings on FaceBook for Life. 

This Electronic Mind-Fuck eats Time and impedes communications beneath cloaks of isolation. 

Too many options get in the way of A Life Lived; the tests and the gifts and the gaffes, 

the free association of iconic responses, the floatsam and jetsom of global garbage,

the notion that you are becoming a potato head in the great electronic garden of the world wide web. 

You do not come alive because you have 29 emails waiting for you to read;

You have to take the garbage out. That leaves three items that friends have forwarded.

All of the messages point you to: 

It's time to Re-engage in the fleshy, face-to-face and heart-to-heart talking we have forgotten.

Is there no intelligent life out there? Now electronics seek to tell you who you are.

The world and the imagination have gone mad.

Your body is hungry, your soul is starving and your mind is imprisoned. That's how it works these days --- click, click, cluck.

Sunday in the Rain

On a rainy Sunday your thoughts turn to quiet things. You might walk around your living space and wonder what is missing.

You might pick up a book, read the newspaper, laugh at the cartoons and wonder what is missing. The sky is cloudy, the daylight is softened and the steady rain makes it cozy indoors. So you begin to search through your treasures.

You're reminded of projects you never completed. You think of how ideas have occupied space in your garage for years. You survey the treasures that you will leave your children: Hardened, half bags of concrete mix, picture frames waiting for the table saw to become uncluttered, and a grocery sack filled with oil that you don't know where it came from.

But the rain come in bands now, signaling the passage of a low pressure trough, possibly a tropical storm. There is no way to stop the rain from falling upon a thirsty earth. 

You allow your attentions to migrate elsewhere. You pick up a drawing tablet or a piece of fabric to occupy your hands. Rituals that thrive in the rain.

And while you draw or work with fabric your mind sows a hundred million seeds that drift into the heart of your lover. Now when I look across this room at you where wrinkles are softened by the torrents of our thing together, I smell pure happiness, a fragrant moment of bliss.

These sorts of things happen on rainy days when staying dry and warm is what we crave.

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OHIO SANS COMPUTER

One view from a week in Ohio spent without a computer.

Whetstone Prairie, Columbus Ohio

I flew to Ohio last week to visit my daughter, Cindy, and her partner Kristy; Ohio creatures visited include Baby Girl, Tatter Tot and Ella Bella. Mighty Mite was reclusive.

Left the lap top at home. Left the Mac Pro at home. Left Face Book and two blogs at home. And I survived nicely, thank you. A short sabbatical, but one that shall be repeated in order to regain a healthy perspective on time and life.

Just weeds. The Whetstone Prairie is a great place to meander along the paths with or without dogs. The initial objections to this uncultivated patch of public land in Columbus have been quieted by the natural beauty of wild things. There is something about such weeds that speaks sweetly of freedom. 

Got to drive Erika's red 1997 Thunderbird (just 17,000 miles on odometer) down to The Quilt Barn in Athens. One of the planned highlights of the trip for the love of my life, Pam, and her Sarasota quilting buddies was this converted dairy barn now housing antique Amish quilts. The quilters all asked for detailed photos of the quilts.

When I met Pam in Athens, the dairy barn provided work and food for inmates at the state mental institution just up the hill. In some ways things have changed during the past forty years.

The mental health institute has moved, but the mentality in the barn has not changed much: NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED. 

Disappointment, YES. 

Did the proprietors worry that the old patterns would be copied and produced by modern American women? No, I believe the NO PHOTOGRAPHY rule was a warped application of the Graven Image law perpetrated by fearful, capitali$t$.

The poorly photographed and printed book sold in the shop does not begin to show the detailed stitching of these Amish quilts.

Despite these demented NO PHOTO prohibition$, we were rewarded by a sky full of beauty on the way back home to Sarasota. The thunderstorm below appeared to be located around Orlando.

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