Synchronicity
My story of synchronicity: I separated from my husband of almost 15 years (we had been together 18 years) in December of 2012. It was one of the hardest things I have done in my life. I felt as if I had lost a limb. Something was missing and yet I felt it was always there, a part of me, cut off, forever. I loved him deeply, I had always loved him. I loved his soul. Sometimes he could live there with his soul-self but most of the time he could not and it was in those moments that I knew I couldn’t live with him for the rest of my life unless things changed. Knowing I could only change myself, I did. I left, found a place across town and continued my journey. My original Artist’s Way book is dated November 2011. That is when I began a serendipitous leg of my life’s journey. Things shifted and changed for me in ways that I never could have imagined they would. “Be careful what you pray for” is a phrase that Julia Cameron states in this section of The Artist’s Way. I didn’t pray for separation and eventual divorce but I did pray for change. I prayed for SOMETHING to shift. I took action. I moved. “Take a small step in the direction of a dream and watch the synchronous doors flying open.” (pg. 66)
I continued to do The Artist’s Way. It looked different on my own. In the beginning, I was alone for a week at a time as my then 13 year-old son was with his dad every other week. I started to do things that I had little time for before. Saturday mornings, I would get up and find a NEW something to do.
One week, I decided to go to a yoga studio I had never been to before. Since I am such a St. Paul girl, I went to Minneapolis. I went to ONE YOGA and took a wonderful class. Afterwards, I treated myself to breakfast at the French Meadow Cafe and Bakery on Lyndale Avenue. Saturday about 10:00am, it was packed with Saturday morning Minneapolis people (who look different than Saturday morning St. Paul people). At first glance, there was nowhere to sit. Then, I spied a single chair just to the left of the door. It was a Minnesota February and way below zero. The establishment kept a heavy velvet curtain, a creatively fashioned vestibule that was only semi-successful at keeping the bitter, bone chilling wind from seeping into the body and bread warmed restaurant. It was cold by the door but a heavy, velvet curtain did what it could to prevent the big, chilly February winds from coming in too strongly and it was the only chair left in the place. The chair closest to the door was occupied by an older man in a big coat with long, straggly, gray hair sprinkled with strands. His coat was heavy, woven brown fabric and worn with rips near the pockets, lining falling off from inside. He smiled, moved his newspaper, notebook and mug closer to his side of the counter and offered up the chair that was a foot away from his. It was a small, tight counter space wedged in behind tables of two and four people along the window that looked out onto the snow covered Lyndale Avenue.
In this space, we sat in our own world for 10-15 minutes. I watched as he crossed out words and circled others on a crossword page in a newspaper and then another. I was enamored of his notebook, worn, weathered, used. My oatmeal came and I had a feeling that I should speak, I should acknowledge this human being with a life source energy next to me. I had done years of reading, had taken many a class on this idea of synchronicity, “things happen for a reason” or serendipity. Each author, each speaker or leader had said the same thing, ‘each person that comes into your space, into your life, has something to share, something for you to learn, you just need to find out from them, what that is. What is that piece of information that they have for you?’
“Cold, isn’t it?” I said. Then a conversation ensued. Michael was his name. He was a writer, a poet and a creative. He wrote poems from crossword words. He had written a lot. Homemade books upon books that he created using his computer. He worked with his hands, did odd jobs or designed spaces and things for larger corporations, like Target, for money. He did just enough to feed his love for writing, spoken word and travel. He spoke of his travels, of his youth. He was maybe 10 years older than me but he looked ten years older than that. He confessed that his youth was wild, filled with drugs, lots of women, living off the land, making art and just BEING. For the 10 years in his mid-life, he had sworn off all of the above except for writing. No sex, no drugs, no moving. Just writing. He was prolific. The art just poured out of him. He shared so much with me in this one morning, it was like we were old friends, catching up on lost time but we deeply KNEW one another. Kindred spirits. He spoke of his life experiences and I spoke of mine. My impending divorce, my loneliness and my yogic and spiritual path. He said he came here most Saturday mornings. He knew the staff and they knew him. He had dated one of the waitresses. He shared his writing technique for the poems he was writing, using the clues from crosswords, he constructed poems. Clever.
Michael and I met more than this once. I started to come to the French Meadow fairly regularly on Saturday mornings. There he would be, at his same regular spot by the door with one chair open for me or whomever else would dare to sit. We would talk about life and share our writing. Over time we furthered our relationship and he invited me to a poetry reading group that he was a part of in NE Minneapolis at Dusty’s Bar. Years later I received his poetry books in the mail. I haven’t heard from him in a few years now. Our time together, our time of serendipity has passed. I think of him and silently give thanks to the moment I met him, the impulse to try something new and the action that followed. I lead with my heart-mind and was open and willing to be a conduit to whatever I needed most.