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Monday, 9 September 2002
The Roots of Coincidence ::
The drive home from work offered a couple of minor coincidences. Of the 474 songs on my iPod, the random song shuffler picked Red Letter’s “Still Dreaming” (from Reach, which precedes my tenure in the band). Odd considering what I wrote this morning about Waking Life.
Now admittedly, there was about a 2% chance of this, but the next song the iPod chose was from Miles Davis’ Aura, an album I had just been talking about with a friend on Saturday.
Then I was remembering a morning last September when I woke up at 5 am to go to the Zen center for morning meditation. The first thought that popped into my mind upon awaking was “I must intensify my practice,” so I did some long bows. I’d never done that before. After sitting (6:15 am Pacific) the roshi said “good morning” as he always does before we reply and bow, and something in the way he said “good morning” triggered a strange thought in my head: “there is something very wrong in the world.” I dismissed it as paranoia.
I drove home, had breakfast, and started doing some work. Around 8:30 am I checked my email, and there was a cryptic e-mail from my ex: had I heard from our friend Ben? “He’s way too close for comfort.” No explanation. Ominous. I realized that my cell phone was off and that I had been on the modem, unable to receive calls on the landline. The Pat Metheny Group’s “The Roots of Coincidence,” from Imaginary Day was playing, so I paused it.
I called my ex, and she told me about how the world as we knew it had changed. It was September 11, 2001.
mathpages.com: The Shape of Coincidence
References:
Coincidence contagion (14 September 2002)
The Holographic Universe (26 September 2002)
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