3-28-09
For many years, I've been noticing strange coincidences in my life. When one pops up, my girlfriend Brigette never fails to respond "It's your life, babe." But I think there may be something to it. And so, I've decided to create this blog tracking these weird coincidences.
With time, I'm hoping others will share similar coincidences from their own life.
Anyhow, my latest brush with "Hmmm, weird" came just today. Last night, while watching the Johnny Depp movie The Ninth Gate on cable, I noticed that his character, an expert on rare books, was named Dean Corso. This sounded vaguely familiar. I then realized that the writer of the story was having a bit of fun, and that the character's name was a combination of Dean, as in Dean Moriarty, a character from the most famous work of beat fiction, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Corso, as in beat poet Gregory Corso. I pointed this out to Brigette, and commented that I hadn't thought of Gregory Corso in many years.
Well, today, after having breakfast with some friends, I suggested we go to a bookstore. Even though I meant to suggest we head for a book store in Burbank, California, Brigette intutitively headied for the nearest cool book store to the restaurant, the Iliad Bookstore in North Hollywood. This turned out to be a brilliant bit of miscommunication. Once I realized where we were headed, I thought "what the heck, why not."
Well, once inside, two strange things happened. First, while looking through a book on baby names, Brigette looked up the name Fitzgerald, which I'd recently suggested as a middle name for our baby about to be. Now I'd suggested this as an homage to both F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But the book gave us another reason. The book said Fitzgerald meant "son of the Spearmighty". My last name, of course, is Speer. Now what are the odds?
Anyhow, a few minutes later, I noticed a book at the top of a shelf that I thought might be interesting. While it proved to be no big deal, when I climbed up the ladder to get a good look at it I noticed an interesting book on the shelf just below. This book was entitled "The Autobiography of Jack Black." I thought "Now this can't be THE Jack Black, could it?" Of course it was not THAT Jack Black. But when I opened up the book I nevertheless received a surprise. The inner page had three handwritten words..."GREGORY CORSO'S BOOK." Someone at the bookstore, furthermore, had added "Autographed by the poet Gregory Corso" and had marked it up to 25 dollars. Needless to say, my mind was blown. I immediately told Brigette. Her response was, no surprise, "It's your life, babe!"
Anyhow, I think we've got a middle name for our son. Fitzgerald. We wouldn't want to mess with the coincidence gods, now would we?
And no, I didn't buy the book.
4-24-09
On 10-29-08 I was reading an email with the TV on in the background. In the email, the writer, Moses Avalon, was writing about the demise of the record industry. Out of the blue, he noted that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world will come in 2012. JUST as I read that, however, the voice on the TV, on a program that had come on after the program I'd been watching had ended, said "2012." I couldn't believe my ears. I immediately replayed the TV (we have Tivo) and sure enough the program was talking about the Mayan calendar, and the end of the world coming in 2012. It noted that, according to Mayan prophecy, greed will bring about this downfall and that "for half there will be food, for others misfortunes. A time for the end of the world of God. A time for uniting for a cause." Now, the odds of me randomly reading "2012" just as I randomly heard "2012" would have to have been one in a hundred million, right? It made me start to wonder if I was receiving some sort of message.
I then realized that my six-year old nephew had died exactly 10 years earlier. 10 years to the day, within the hour. This led me to wonder if someway somehow my nephew was trying to communicate with me from some other world. This feeling lasted about a day.
I've had an even stranger experience. In January 1998, I was working as a buyer in the record industry. This means I was taken to lunch. A lot. In my case it also means I ate chinese food. A lot. So much so that I became well-acquainted with the fortunes one was likely to find in a fortune cookie. Well, one day I received what for me was a quite unusual fortune. It read "You will soon witness a miracle." I thought it so unusual I brought it back from lunch and showed it to a few co-workers. I thought it was kind of funny. But, then the next day, which I believe was a Friday, things started to get weird. At a different chinese restaurant, but in my very next fortune cookie, I received an even stranger fortune, which seemed to confirm that I would soon witness a miracle. It read "Something amazing will happen on Monday." I was like, "Wow, I'm gonna witness a miracle on Monday." I made a big joke of it. I asked people to predict what miracle I was gonna witness, etc.
By Monday, however, I'd almost forgotten about it. I did my work and went to lunch (no chinese this time) but nothing unusual happened. Come late afternoon, my friend Deborah dropped off a large mail tub in my office and asked me the status of my miracle-watch. I opened my mail as I explained to her my slight sense of disappointment. As I opened one package--a promo CD of the artist Kristen Hersh's album Strange Angels, however, something caught Deborah's eye. It was a little metal angel. Deborah asked if she could have it. I said, "Yeah, sure," figuring it could only bring me luck. Deborah took the envelope containing the angel and returned to her office. As she did so, however, I reached back in the tub containing 20-30 packages and opened the next one. It was...a promo CD of the artist Kristen Hersh's album Strange Angels. Someone from the label (Rykodisc) had screwed up and sent me two packages. It occurred to me that this was the miracle. As soon as I gave something away, it had been returned. I thought of the Beatles' album Abbey Road, and their song "The End," and its lyrics "And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make."
I went into Deborah's office. She was sitting down behind her desk with a strange look on her face. I started to tell her that I thought my getting a second strange angel as soon as I gave her the first one was the miracle I'd been waiting for. No response. I started to apologize for sounding like a freak. She said something like "No, I totally believe you" and handed me back the angel I'd given her. She then handed me a short slip of paper that had come with the angel in the envelope, but which I had not read. The slip explained that in South America small metal angels like the ones I was holding were nailed on church walls, and that they represented prayers. The slip said further that these angels are known as Milagros...Spanish for...MIRACLES.
A fortune said I would soon witness a miracle. A second fortune said it would happen on Monday. And on Monday, I received not one but two miracles in the mail, one replacing the other as soon as I gave it away.
Now what are the odds of that? A billion to one? A hundred billion to one? You tell me. I was so unnerved by this coincidence that I spent months trying to figure out its meaning. I thought for a time it had something to do with a female friend who had an angel painting at her house. This led me to tell her I approved of her dating a guy I otherwise knew little about. They soon got married. I thought the glory of their love was somehow connected to the miracle I'd witnessed.
I ran into her a few years later, however, and she told me they were now divorced. So much for miracles... Or at least our understandng of them.