Synchronicity: A series of events that occurred within a 24-hour period, mostly over drinks

Sometimes, bizarre things happen almost at the same time or in a well-ordered manner that, when pieced together or looked at collectively, is more than just a matter of chance. Today, the cicadas are screaming--they are almost deafening.

*****

1. Empty Glass
Friday, July 29th, 12:57 PM

A friend shows me an empty shell of a cicada nymph. She tells me that cicadas spend the first half of their lives underground, feeding. Until a time comes for them to tunnel to the surface, break out of their old shell and fly away. To sing and to reproduce.


2. Milk
Friday, July 29th, 5:05 PM

A 24-year-old girl meets a 24-hour-old boy:

It's the first day of the rest of his life. It's roughly the 9,023rd day of mine. I have lived 216,528 hours more than him. He spent most of his 24 hours feeding and sleeping. I feel like I've done the same with my two-hundred-thousand-plus.


3. Coca-Cola
Friday, July 29th, 9:21 PM

I've known S. for about a year now. I won't say we are friends but we are always friendly. We've gone to the same parties, had lunch at the school cafeteria together, and asked each other for small favors.

I've always tagged him as somebody different from me. He didn't, couldn't, and would probably never understand me and my recent decisions. However, we talk at a dinner/sayonara party for a common friend, and I end up telling him about recent developments. Not ony does he respect my decision, he also understands it; and while explaining things to him, I begin to understand and value my decisions and their consequences better.


4. Whiskey
Saturday, July 30th, 2:32 AM

Two people are fresh out of a shower. The half naked man waves goodbye at me as he leads the woman to the bedroom. I smile, raise my glass in a toast, and light a cigarette. The paper crackles and the tip burns a bright, angry red as I take a long, deep drag.

Two hours later, on my way home on my bike, the hem of my much-too-long jeans is caught on the gears. I immediately back-pedal in order to free it, but this causes the hem of the other leg to be trapped. Unable to bring either of my feet down, I fall from my bike, landing on my left knee: causing an old, scabbed-over wound to bleed again.

I untangle myself--and my jeans--from the mess. As I get back on my bike, I see that two people--a man and a woman--had witnessed my fall.


5. Ice-cold Water
Saturday, July 30th, 5:34 AM

I am not sleepy, so I decide to watch a movie to pass the time.

The movie is about strange things--unbelievably strange things--that did (and do) happen. About synchronicity--when things occur seemingly in a certain order that is more than just a matter of chance.

The movie is about time--how it can seem linear at close range but can actually be curved when viewed from a fair distance. About how two different persons' times when seen in an imaginary chart could actually intersect at a single point-instant, or follow a whole series of moments, or be totally asymptotic to each other.

The movie is about signs--those that we cannot dismiss, and those that we miss. The movie is about choices--those we choose and those we choose not to choose.

The movie is about the middle--how we are often lost in the middle of nowhere: On the way to work, but making a detour; sitting alone somewhere and singing along to a song; listening to inane advertisements on an on-hold phonecall to someone one doesn't know; driving back from a failed date; hating and loving someone at the same time in equal measure--the list goes on and on and on...

6. Coffee, Tea or Orange Juice
Saturday, July 30th, 9:18 AM

So Now Then:

The cicadas are out and they are singing a rousing chorus that I cannot ignore. I am bombarded with ideas and images too fast for me to really capture and edit, and I know I have to write them down immediately but patiently. Because to postpone it is to lose the moment, and to do it haphazardly is to reduce its significance.

I sit down on a park bench, over looking a koi pond and suddenly everywhere around me is a conspiracy of signs: the lone pigeon sitting quietly facing of an empty bench; the pack of cigarettes and a lighter, lying on the same empty bench, that was left by someone I was just so sure I had met; the drop of water that fell on my arm out of nowhere; the blue-tailed lizard that sat next to me for a second before scampering away. I write and write and write as all these just cascade over me. All the while, the buzz of the cicadas in my head like a chant: Listen, listen, listen.

And I decide thet whenever the cicadas are singing--no, screaming--at me, I promise to always listen.

*****

Sometimes, bizarre things happen almost at the same time or in a well-ordered manner that, when pieced together or looked at collectively, is more than just a matter of chance. As soon as I figure that one out, I notice that the cicadas have quieted down as if they never were. But it did happen.