synchronicity

I love this world. Just when things have become too much, just when I begin to get a little Hobbesian in my outlook, an afternoon like this one comes along: a sweet kiss on the head from the fates.

I've biked past the Museum of Jurassic Technology for days now, and decided this afternoon to stop and wander through. It is an odd, twilit, moth-eaten sort of a place, and I had the feeling I was the only one in there who wasn't a talented musician from Eastern Europe. The first exhibit described a rare bat from South America that focuses its echolocation soundwaves so intensely that they actually cross over the spectrum and become x-rays, thus enabling the bat to fly directly through solid objects. (Credulous as I am, I happily expounded on this extraordinary bat to my slightly smarter friends this evening, and they set me straight. Evidently you can't believe everything you read in museums.)

Then I found this amazing quote on an exhibit devoted to the art of the mobile home:

"The verb 'to dwell' has a distinct meaning. At one time it meant to hesitate, to linger, to delay; 'to dwell', like the verb 'to abide', simply means to pause, to stay put for a length of time; it implies we will eventually move on. So the dwelling place should perhaps be seen as temporary."

-J.B. Jackson, The Moveable Dwelling

The dwelling place should perhaps be seen as temporary. I like that. That's what meditation teaches us, after all. To take the long view, and realize that nothing stays, so why get so uptight about it? (I meditated this morning, can you tell? What with the chipper worldview and flitting around from topic to topic and all?)

Then, walking home, I passed not one, not two, but THREE places in which one could purchase a cupcake. And then I walked past the mother of the boys Xir recently befriended, the one with the amazing house, and she recognized me. I was so glad to run into her when I was relatively nicely dressed, doing something normal, and not accompanied by puking children. I feel it can only serve to elevate me in her eyes. Perhaps she will be a friend! How lovely it would be to have a friend in walking distance, with children of similar ages. Unimaginably lovely.

And, finally, checking my email upon my return I found a program at the Hammer museum combining group therapy and needlepoint. Free. Did I not just write about how therapeutic the making of things is? And was I not just telling myself that I ought to look into the practice of psychology a little more deeply before committing myself to a three-year graduate program?What an amazing answer to those unspoken queries, the little whispered longings of my soul for help.

Yet another exhibit at the Museum for Jurassic Technology was an exploration of the life work of Athanasius Kircher, who believed the world was composed of secret knots of magnetism. These secret knots were all interrelated and the changing of one would set all the others into motion. I felt those secret knots at work keenly today. And am headily grateful for it.

Biking to my friend's house for hand-shaken margaritas and laughing conversation later this evening, I watched the sun go down along the creek to this enchanting music. I want to share it with you in case there are any doldrums lurking about in any of your lives. I don't know of a single doldrum that can survive the playing of this song at high volume.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

my least favorite thing about my house today: having to unfold and make the bed when I'd rather just fling myself rapturously into it.

my favorite thing about my house today: the leafy shadows my plants cast on the shower curtain as I bathe by candlelight.