Moving Math

The first song I run into in my iTunes this morning as I sit down to write about
coincidence and intuition?

"Synchronicity" by the Police, of course.
All the lyrics are worthwhile, so here they are:

"Synchronicity I" by the Police
With one breath, with one flow You will know Synchronicity A sleep trance, a dream dance A shaped romance Synchronicity A connecting principle Linked to the invisible Almost imperceptible Something inexpressible Science insusceptible Logic so inflexible Causally connectable Yet nothing is invincible If we share this nightmare Then we can dream Spiritus mundi If you act as you think The missing link Synchronicity We know you, they know me Extrasensory Synchronicity A star fall, a phone call It joins all Synchronicity It's so deep, it's so wide You're inside Synchronicity Effect without cause Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause Synchronicity

It's been a week full of it. I began reading Letters to Vanessa by Jeremy Hayward to take a break from Liar's Club by Mary Karr (great book but pretty heavy). In my first class of the week, a student asked about intuition and how it fit into writing practice, which lead to a conversation about coincidence and synchronicity. I continued to read Letters only to go deeper and deeper into these questions (I had read his more "academic" books before, but not this one) and of course began to notice it all over, as is usually the case.

I also noted myself behaving in some old rusty patterns I hadn't done in awhile. Eating in binges, not exercising at all, shutting down and disconnecting. I attributed it to winter, to, well, I don't know what. You know how it can be. You start acting all shitty towards yourself and no explanations are necessary. The part that believes you suck just puts it forward without justification and you stop asking.

Then, last night in the last class of the week, it hit me. Last night was the 20th and there was so much focus on it being a year since Obama's inauguration, on Dylan at the credit union with students returning, that I had missed the warning signs. The 19th is the anniversary of my mother's death. Clearly my body caught the signals and protected my mind from them, or tried to amplify the messages with abusive behaviors.

I wrote about it, so painful to feel the connections between self-hate and grief, how my mother taught me those behaviors and somehow by doing them I feel closer to her. Later, in bed, I told Dylan that the older I get, the less real my parents seem, the less I actually remember, while the more I actually sympathize, understand and am curious about them. Very sad stuff.

In bed, crying after processing, I also realized a moving chunk of math. As of March 15, my father will have been dead 20 years. My mother died when I was almost 20. This is the 13 year after my mother died; my dad died when I was about to turn 13. I had a mother as long as I haven't had a father, and vice-versa. Wow.

Coincidence, synchronicity, we tend to use these for blessings, for good outcomes. Fate gets the bad rap for the "negatives." This is a mixed realization, but I am giving it to synchronicity. As the Police point out, all of it works toward the same ends, and who am I to say which it is?

RIP Tricia Leanna Reilly Hall