Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

I see numbers. The same numbers. Over and over again. A bit unbelievable, even sci-fi? Yes. Worse, cliche? Perhaps. But it happens. Has happened many times. Will probably happen again (unless someone uncrosses the circuit in the Universe's server room).

I see the numbers ever day, more or less. But some days, I see more of them. Today was one such day.

The number 137 was the star, this time, along with its derivatives (173/1137/7031/373, etc). The sightings started when I did: in the morning, with 137 and co flying at me from all directions. On the clock, roadsigns, timestamps on computer files, the license plates of cars that cut me off or otherwise drew my attention -- and on and on. If there was an avenue for the numbers to somehow find their way into my field of awareness (and do so in some unlikely way, as to impress me to the point of taking notice), it arrived within the course of my morning of work and errands.

And then I stopped for gas.

I hadn't planned on getting gas. I didn't even need gas, really (I feel comfortable with a half a tank). But I had a few minutes to kill before a doctor's appointment, and the gas station was literally right across the road. I treasure time, and don't waste it (nor did I want to waste my time in the waiting room at a doctor's office). So I got gas, maybe for the first time before the needle was making love to the big "E." And, the total amount I ended up getting? 11.73 gallons, exactly. And did I intentionally squeeze off just this amount, perhaps in some subconscious attempt to manufacture a "meaningful coincidence" and, hence, feel special? Nope. I'd just fed my truck the nozzle, set it on auto, then returned to my cab and let her fill (I had something to do in there; again, I don't waste time). And, let's not even get anal about the chances of such a hit; considering the circumstances of this number arising in this fashion, after I'd been literally besieged by it all morning (and for years previously), at least a couple dozen times -- just ... no. We're talking astronomical figures, here.

But, it was still morning then. The day was still young.

Next to join the 137 bandwagon: the CD player in my truck. Over the couple hours I spent at the doctor's, the numbers had stopped pestering me (even numbers need rest, you know). But this only made the forthcoming incident that much more noticeable. I was parked in my truck, eating lunch, when I decided to put my window down. So I keyed the ignition (because I'm one of the power-window elite), cracked the window, and then turned the key back as fast -- but not before the CD player blinked to life, just long enough to display the active track's time: 3:36, clicking to 3:37 precisely as I killed the power. Afterward, I sat momentarily with my hand on the turned key, in a quiet shock -- a synchroshock, that is (sorry, couldn't resist).

And were the numbers ready to call it a day? No, they were not. Not at all.

I was next visited at the market -- twice. Or maybe it was just one single, super-sized synchronicity. Anyway, this one began with my returning a vitamin supplement. I went to a register. I told the cashier what I wanted. He tapped some buttons on the fancy computerized checkout (am I the only one still fascinated with these wonderful contraptions? I'm caught back in the days of single-line readouts and dot-matrix-printed receipts). As a matter of course, the man then reached out for my return's requisite receipt, whereupon his watch was placed squarely into my line of vision -- thus forcing me to see that it read 3:17. Again, I was struck with stunned amusement. This time, however, I didn't have the chance to smile and laugh, for a split second later, the cashier read me the total I would be receiving back from the return: $31.73. I never did smile. Instead, I accepted my money and then walked the store in a contained shock, a kind of synchronicity overload.

"Surely that was enough for one day," you're saying now. "No number is that tenacious!!!" Normally, you might be right, for, indeed, numbers do need their rest. But this was no normal day.

The numbers still had one little surprise for me. Recall how I'd gotten gas that morning, when I'd purchased exactly 11.73 gallons by simply letting the tank fill to capacity (after seeing that number or its cousins no less than a couple dozen times on the way there ...). Well, that evening, while updating the spreadsheet of my finance books, I went to enter the new debit I'd incurred from buying gas: $26.95, which I'd paid on a credit card. The card's preexisting balance was $46.18, and so I added these together to get my new bottom line: $73.13.

I couldn't write this stuff, folks (and I'm a writer, for God's sake).

 

(Note the 3:16 timestamp. I guess Johnny the cashier's watch was a minute fast (or the fancy checkout computer was slow).)

 (And, because one parenthetical anecdote isn't enough:  When I went into my records to fetch this receipt for the above photograph, I encountered two other receipts from the same market, both of which sported prominent 37's (a 3:37 timestamp on one, and a 7337 barcode number on another, these Just Happening to enter my line of sight). If it's not obvious, the numbers' sense of humor is rivaled only by their tenacity.)

More Number-Fun

I've reported on my fun with numbers, certainly; and I've reported the newish, "combination-types" of these sort of incidents, too. Well, here's a little more of the latter.

This time, it involved bumper stickers.

First, I've been seeing numbers lately (which goes without saying, really, for the phenomenon hasn't stopped since it started, years ago). Second, the predominant repeats as of the last couple days have been 317, 144, and their variants (73, 14, 44, etcetera). Which brings us to the bumper stickers I got in the mail today.

The bumper stickers in question were for my websites, to be put on my newest vehicle, as to promote my little web-enterprise (the extent of my advertising, as it were). Upon opening up the mailer, however, I gave pause: there, staring up at me, were more my latest, most-popular numbers -- a whole cluster of them, at the bottom of the bumper stickers (their print numbers, I guess). I found this notable from the outset, due to the sheer amount of the repeats, and their total randomness, and their arrival precisely admidst a storm of these very numbers, lasting for days.

Though, what really made this incident blog-worthy was the underscore of irony, given that one of the stickers was for (drum-roll) SynchronicityBook.com. (Another patternistic component of these incidents, as it so happens, such as when I experience book synchronicities while reading books about synchronicities ...)

But wait, there's more!

When I opened the scanned image in my photo editor, to crop it for this very blog post, I was met with yet another number-repeat, now in the scanned file's timestamp, as a Sundae-topping cherry of sorts.

Upon seeing the cluster of numbers on the bumper stickers, I'd smiled. Upon seeing the file's timestamp, I laughed (which, it felt, seemed to be the point of that little footnote, as if some force wasn't satisfied until getting that response ...).

4/7/14 - Repeat Numbers, Again

I am sought out by certain numbers, it seems, often in novel ways that leave me equal parts tickled and intrigued. I've written of this phenomenon both on this blog and in a book I wrote on the subject, Synchronicity: One Man's Experience. Today, however, I experienced a particularly extraordinary number-repetition.

It started yesterday, with my trusty timer.

The timer is nothing special, just a standard digital hour-timer, of the kind used to time pot roasts and casseroles the world over. But I've developed a special affinity for my timer, for no particular reason, the way we do anything we use regularly. What do I use this timer for? That's complicated, and immaterial to the subject at hand, so I'll just say that I use it daily. In this regard, yesterday was no different, except for one thing: once my timer went off, I didn't turn off its alarm. I was out of the room at the time, and I'd remembered the timed event on my own, so I just let the timer beep. I knew it would stop after a minute, and it did, so that I totally forgot about the timer -- until today, when I went to use it anew.

Of all the times I've employed my timer, this was the first I'd neglected to reset it afterward. Thankfully, it didn't mind.

One interesting thing about my timer: for some reason, it counts in reverse after going off, and will continue to do so until reset. Well, since I hadn't reset my timer, it continued counting all through yesterday afternoon and last night, as if patiently awaiting my return. As it so happened, the timer waited in this fashion for exactly seventeen hours, thirty-seven minutes, and thirty-seven seconds, hitting that thirty-seventh second at the precise moment I picked it up and looked at it this afternoon. Then, the digital display read 17:37:37.

One of the numbers I repeatedly see is 37, 1137, and variants of these (73, 137, 173, etc). In fact, in the last few weeks, these have been the most prominent repetitions, repeatedly coming to me in ways which defy reasonable chance, and psychological explanations such as selective perception and subconscious fixation.

Not only did I just happened to pick up the timer when it displayed two of "my" numbers by way of the hour- and minute columns, but I picked it up to the second for it to display a third. Quite a trick.

I stood holding the timer for some time after, searching for any possible explanation. But I came up empty. I hadn't so much as gone near that timer all day, so there was no way I could've known what it had ticked to; until I went in the room and fetched the timer, I'd been at the other side of the house, and the timer was turned away from me as I approached.

It bears mentioning that, after seeing 37 and its variants so much lately (and in ways and configurations nearly as unlikely and striking as that of the timer), I had become somewhat jaded to the repetitions, so that they'd lost their wow and I'd begun ignoring them, for all the mystery they represented -- a sensory-overload of sorts. This is significant because it has happened several times in the past, and every time it does, the numbers will begin repeating in different, more coherent ways, as to regain my attention -- and, usually, to inspire more blog posts such as this one. So, not only was the event significantly unlikely in itself, but it conformed with a pattern repeated again and again over years of fundamentally identical incidents.

Seeing such a pattern, a detective would say that the incident "fits the profile." I'm inclined to agree.

Intuition Is Real

I'm an intuitive kind of guy, it would seem. And, lately, this "skill" has been a little more active than in the past, as to warrant sharing.

First, a few months ago, I started seeing a pattern in my parking: wherever I would park, however randomly, I would find myself confronted with certain, repeating numbers on the license plates of neighboring cars (or, alternately, on a bumper sticker or other adornment). Now, my repeat-number drama is another phenomenon I've made some noise about, but the parking-space thing lent a new, intuitive dimension to it. The pattern goes like this: I'll be strongly and distinctly Compelled to park in a certain spot, and these Compellings will, almost without fail, land me squarely behind a license plate bearing one of "my" numbers (usually the number-repeat du jour). And that's how it goes as of late, again and again, such that, within the last few months alone, I've had it happen dozens of times, to the point of it becoming as common as the wind.

This particular flavor of the phenomenon is, admittedly, a tad murky, since you'd have to be me for such hard-to-convey subtleties like the Compellings and the conspicuous number-repeats to really have an impact (that is, seeing these numbers dozens of times over the course of a day, every day, for years on end, and always in nearly identical fashion). But, still, I found its mention appropriate to this post.

I dunno. Maybe someone will find this part notable (after all, I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing this stuff).

* * *

Anyway. Moving along.

As for the second recent trend in my intuitive adventures, this one's a tad more somber: predicting the behavior of my fellow motorists. Or, rather, their rash, mortally dangerous behavior.

This hair-raising variant of my intuitive Compellings has popped up infrequently over the years, always in the gravely conspicuous fashion in this post's first link. However, unlike other kinds of synchronicistic phenomena I experience, these near-mishaps have, thankfully, been few and far between -- until last month, when I got two "near misses" within weeks of each other, both of them almost exactly alike.

The first was on 2/15, when I was stopped at a little four-way intersection within the parking lot of a large shopping center. I came to the intersection, stopped, waited ... but when my turn came up, something inside me said, "Stay" -- another Compelling, impossible to describe but no less striking. So I stayed. Then, a split-second later as I watched a truck approach the intersection, I had a second stirring, hot on the other's heels: that truck wasn't going to stop.

Well, the truck didn't stop. It sailed right through with barely a pump of the brakes, penetrating the exact space that my car's driver's side would've occupied had I gone through (as was logical and legal and totally "normal" to do). And need I mention that there was zero indication of the truck's murderous behavior beforehand (nor enough time for me to react even if there had been) ...?

And then, on the 29th, two weeks to the day, it happened again.

Another mini-intersection in a shopping center's maze-like parking lot. Another insistent Compelling to stay put when my time came to proceed. Another car barreling through the four-way stop, precisely as I somehow knew that it would (despite having no business of knowing such). And, of course, this all happened with no outward, logical indicators that would've allowed me to predict what was coming, even on a deeply subconscious level (or, again, to have time to react, with everything transpiring within a second or less).

This time, the only differences were that this car didn't even slow down, and that part of my Compelling was that it would not only blow through the stop sign but swerve through (which it did). Oh yeah, and this time, I wasn't in a car, but instead on my moped (which, for those unfamiliar with mopeds, are no match for any car, especially not a demonic minivan swerving by at speed).

* * *

My latest intuition was of a different, less-"Oh my God!" kind, and did not involve a motor vehicle in any capacity, parked or intersection-ignoring or otherwise.

This one involved food.

Umeboshi plums. The Japanese are fond of these, or so I've read. Ever heard of umeboshies? I hadn't, not until I happened across them at the health-food store.

Long story short: I saw this curious concoction, and was instantly seized by another Compelling: buy this stuff, and eat it. I read over the plums' Asian-character-marked packaging, looking for some possible reason why I should be interested in an odd ethnic food from an ethnicity that I cannot claim. And then, after I saw the plums' outlandishly high price ($35 and some change for a teeny little bottle), I reread the box, thinking I'd missed where the umeboshi will clean my house or cure cancer or do something to justify their cost. But, nothing other than nutrition facts and some optimistic marketing jargon.

My Compelling, however, remained unfazed: get the plums, ridiculous price or not.

I bought the plums.

Once again, I'll summarize: within a day after eating one of these zesty, salty little plums, I felt different. Better. My health is not what it could be; specifically, my digestion. And that's just what the plums seemed to address: my digestive issues, and the many systemic symptoms that result therefrom. I let myself get excited, but only a little; after all, my improvement could've been coincidence, if not outright placebo (despite my having no notion that the plums would improve my digestion, conscious or otherwise). So I experimented, noting the specific improvements that seemed to implicate the plums, and when/if they corresponded with my eating the stuff.

The improvements did correspond, without question. And the benefits continue to this day.

One thing bears mention here: my digestive woes were not a recent thing, nor something that I hadn't tried to address in the past. As it were, I've tried many, many, many remedies, from supplements to radical diets to yoga and special exercises to herbs and unguents and foul-tasting spices, all the way to fringe experimentation either too obscure or personal to expand upon -- without noticeable improvement. But then, from out of nowhere, I'd blindly bought this unfamiliar, expensive imported food, going on nothing but a classic "gut feeling" -- and it worked. (Though, as some after-the-fact research has pointed out, my results are not surprising, for umeboshi plums are traditionally known as a highly effective digestive remedy (known to the Japanese, at least -- and, it would seem, to whatever hidden force lay behind my intuitions).)

And, for what it's worth: umeboshi tastes damn good. I like to mix it with something sweet and savory, myself. Bonus.

4/9/15: Numbers ... Again

The numbers were after me again.

73. 37. 1137. 317. 1703. They would vary in this manner, as if to mock me, but the underlying phenomenon always shone through. And shine it did, for on that morning when I went to the store, the numbers were repeating like crazy, appearing everywhere I looked, whether I wanted to see them or not.

Even the grocery store wasn't beyond their reach.

In the checkout line, I stayed poker-faced when the man in front of me rung up a total of $31.17, as announced by the cashier. Yet, despite everything, there was still a voice of dissent in my head: Just a coincidence. If not, then shouldn't your total be seventy-three-something, too?

It came my turn. I handed over my few purchases. The cashier rung them up -- and the total avoided 73 in all forms. I was neither pleased nor displeased. My total was $17.27, as it were. I produced a twenty, and took up my bag.

Then the cashier gave me my change, coins first. "Seventy-three cents," she said, before silently handing over two dollar bills.

I held my laughter until the parking lot.

10/25/14: 73

This afternoon, it was numbers again.

Usually the "coincidences" come as events or themes, or obsessively recurrent objects; others, however, it's repeat numbers, cropping up in the darnedest of places and in the darnedest of ways. And then there's a third type, which combines the two into something that could only be described as magical.

This afternoon's incident was one of the latter, and indeed, magical it felt.

It started with a flurry of 73's. I was out, driving around to do errands, when, out of the blue, 73 was everywhere I looked. Signs, prices,  odometer readout. On the license plates of passing cars (many of these pulling in front of me, or doing something else to conspicuously enter my line of vision -- inconsistent with being subconsciously sought out by me, in any case). A variation was 37, appearing equally (which didn't surprise me, since reversals are a regular pattern in these incidents). Within the space of ten minutes of driving across town, I was privy to no less than a dozen 73's/37's, perhaps more (I'd lost track).

But that was just over the drive to the store.

Only at the market did things really get notable enough to inspire this blog post. However unlikely the downpour of repetitions I saw on the way there, I didn't pay too much attention, because coincidences sometimes really are just coincidences, and the incident thus far just lacked the precision to wow me enough to write something down (plus, those just happen so often). However, once I parked at the market and the 73/37 sightings kept up, my opinion started to change. First, when I grabbed my change from my truck's holder, it was exactly 37 cents. Then, in the store, the number kept flying at me: UPC codes, serving sizes of foods I checked, price tags, numbers overheard on a cellphone conversation. I happened past the deli freezer and saw its thermometer at 37.5 degrees. Until then, I'd been writing off the incident as selective perception. But this was just too many repetitions, in too many diverse and unlikely places, to reasonably attribute to that old trickster of the eyes, nor most other cognitive explanations.

I knew then that I'd have to make a log entry, noting the improbable series. At that point, though, it still wasn't compelling enough for a blog post.

That point was reached only at the checkout, which rang up as [drumroll] exactly 73 cents. But wait, think about that figure a minute, because you must realize: I had a basketful of groceries. How could one possibly check out for so little money, ever (and that was with tax, mind you)? Two things. First, I had $10 in rewards points stored up this visit, and when I used them it covered most of the cost of my stuff. Then, second, it just so happened that the market had a blowout-special day where literally everything was 20% off, store-wide. But, to really see the complexity of having my order be precisely 73 cents, we must break down the logistics here a bit further, to the prices of the individual items. There were four separate ones, for one thing, all different prices; and then, additionally, there were vagaries in these prices. There was the oddball 1.08lb lamb liver that cost $6.23 or some uncommon amount of change, same for some bagged coffee and a by-weight vegetable, and then the last item was on sale by percentage and so had a similarly irregular price.

The point is, it was really damn unlikely to have hit exactly 73 cents, in more ways than one. Were I to have consciously tried to assemble such an order, I would've been hard pressed, and that was assuming that the store contained any such combination of goods (it's not too big a store, as it were).

Yet I not only hit this improbable number (perhaps my record low for a grocery order), but did so after a blatant string of sightings of just that number.

From the moment I was quoted that total, I knew a blog post lay in my future. And that was before I received the receipt, which placed my checkout time at exactly 4:37 PM.

(As soon as I left the market, I stopped seeing the number, even when I went actively looking for it.)

A Series of Shocks

The logical mind doesn't quiet easily.

It's a study, I've found. When it comes to such mental silencing, each branch of the mind is different. For me, the illogical subconscious can be shut up by a single, quick event or experience of adequate consequence, such as seeing gravity repel one's foot from the ground instead of pulling it down. The logical, conscious mind, on the other hand, is quieted by the opposite: it takes a succession of events to penetrate the conscious mind and its calcified hedge of logic, being resistant to the individual hard-hitters that can flummox the subconscious so.

Case in point.

One afternoon, I was out driving. That day, I'd been haunted by numbers again -- 137 and its variants, namely. They were assailing me from everywhere, as I've documented in past posts; but, chiefly, they were arriving via the license plates of other cars.

I stopped at a light, and there it was again, on the car in front of me: a 137 on its license plate.

But that could easily be chance, my logical mind announced, in answer. If it's not just chance, then shouldn't the car next to that one have one of the numbers?

I looked to the next car over, and its license plate ended in 3733.

Still just coincidence, insisted Logic. Were there three, you might be on to something.

Immediately after this pronouncement, a car edged up closer to the light, thus exposing its license plate directly into my view: 3701.

My logical mind made no response, its figurative jaw left open.

And then, for good measure, I looked to a fourth car, the next one over: 1137.

Logical foot entered logical mouth.

Shocked, I thought then. My logical mind has been quieted by a good old-fashion synchroshock.

But, no, it didn't stop there.

Precisely as this thought crossed my mind, the lyric "a series of shocks" sounded over the radio, in classical thought-synchro fashion, that so distinctly patternistic of past incidents.

A series of shocks, yes. That's what's necessary to quiet the logical mind, after all.

I laughed out loud.

Stressing the Point

The numbers. They were at it again.

Not that they'd ever stopped (or had for the last several years, for that matter). But, rather, they were just on an uptick again, inordinately present and ridiculously abundant, as well as particularly ornery -- even witty, seeming to toy with me. On the day in question, I'd not only seen the number 37 and its variants somewhere in the neighborhood of several dozen times (at least that many; I just lost count around the 30-40 mark), but the number had appeared to track me down. In parking lots, for instance: everywhere I parked, the number would be on a neighboring car(s) in some fashion, usually the license plate, and always in a manner both conspicuous and unlikely (and impossible to have been even subconsciously orchestrated by myself, due to, say, invisibility of the number until I parked and, hence, brought it into my view).

Naturally, with so many number-repeats that day, I made several entries into my endless log of such incidents, that evening. However, even at that late hour, there was still one more in store.

As it were, I was making said entries in a gym lobby of all places, staked out on their complimentary couch with my laptop on my knees, the setting sun coming in through the picture window at my back. It was then, while pecking the day's synchronicities into the keyboard, that it happened: with a dull roar from behind me, the window darkened, drawing my attention. Instinctively, I turned around: a truck had parked at the curb outside, feet from me, with a large trailer hitched at the back. And, the way I'd turned around, it was the rear half of this trailer that crowded my vision.

Advertising a landscaping business of some sort, the trailer was crowded with a phone number in large, eye-grabbing type, the last four digits of which were directly in my line of sight: "7337."

Precisely as I was writing about the dozens of 37s, as if to stress the point. No, I'm not making this up.

With a chuckle, I simply made a new entry in my log, transcribing this latest head-spinner. It took seconds; I still had the log file open in my computer's text editor.

Butterflies

It started with butterflies, this miracle.

I'd been seeing them, as I sometimes See Things. The butterflies had been cropping up in my life, archetypal-like, whether in the flesh or just their symmetrical four-pointed image. But, everywhere I looked, butterflies.

So, when I happened across the newspaper article headlined "Butterflies and children," it drew my attention.

Except, I don't read the newspaper. Never appealed to me, papers (or news, for that matter). But that day was different, because this particular paper cried out to me -- commanded I take it and look through. It was at the doctor's office, as it were, a two-day-old edition of the local rag -- which would explain why the paper was in the trash bin, next to the water cooler I'd patronized, in the waiting room. So, not only did the paper cry out so imperiously, but it was free, and unblemished; and, indeed, I was waiting, without occupation. There weren't even any other patients there to witness my dive into the trash to pull the paper free.

Thus, I had no excuse but to rescue the newspaper from its fate, drink my water-cooler water, and then return to my seat to wait for the doctor, now with reading material. A win-win decision, for the paper and my attentions both.

But still, I didn't see the butterfly article. No, because it was buried some pages back, in 4A territory, not warranting even a sliver of front-page coverage. I only discovered it by beginning a headlining story about some local flap, then being prompted to turn to page 3A, after which I overshot and hit its sibling -- thereby exposing me to the "Butterflies" headline. So it was pure "chance" that I happened across the miraculous little article in question. (Read some of my prior synchronicity posts, or the book I wrote about the phenomenon, and you'll understand my use of quotation marks.)

"Oh, hey, another butterfly," I remarked internally, upon sighting the article, not without a little jolt of Jung's classic "numinosity." At once, I forgot page 3A and the rest of the front-page article, instead reading about the "Butterflies and children."

Initially, the article centered on the story of the many children touched by World War II, the Nazi regime, and the Holocaust. I got through about half the article, enough to see how its title referred to a poem written by one such affected child -- "The Butterfly," it was called, naturally. At this point, the minor synchronicity's numinosity had faded, giving way to a simple interest in the plight of these children and the butterfly poem.

And that's when my name was called. The doctor was ready to see me.

I set down the paper, but didn't put it back in the trash; there was still half a butterfly-article to read. The doctor said I could leave it in the waiting room; but that didn't Feel Right to me. In fact, I was Compelled to keep this newspaper with my person, in that distinct, patternistic way I've detailed throughout this strange blog. And so I did, taking the paper with me into the doctor's little examination alcove.

"Where can I put these?" I asked, holding out my coat and my newly cherished paper.

The doctor pointed to a nearby chair of accommodating size.

Obediently, I went to put my things in the chair -- but froze before I could do so, for there, on the chair's fabric seat, was printed a large, unmistakable monarch butterfly.

"Oh, hey, another butterfly," I again remarked internally, now with even more supernormality. The newspaper affair had become a certified Incident, upgraded from a mere "coincidence." (Again, those mocking quotations.)

But that was only for starters. I hadn't read the rest of the article.

My time with the doctor did not make me forget the article. Quite the contrary: by the time we'd finished, my obsessive attraction to the newspaper had not lessened. So, after the ritual of paying up at the front desk, I remained in the parking lot, resuming the article where I'd been interrupted. From there, that's when I knew that this one was not only an Incident, but a Blog Post (the highest rung of my personal synchronicity hierarchy).

I'll let the article speak for itself, regarding a schoolteacher who took interest in the Holocaust children (estimated at 1.6 million):

Eleanor Schiller, a social studies teacher at the school, had a dream one night in which she started a project to honor the children of the Holocaust. The children would be represented by butterflies.

She told the school administrators, fellow teachers and students that [the school] was going to somehow collect 1.6 million butterflies to honor the children. Of course, some thought the idea far-fetched and some new [sic] Ellie's determination when she wanted to do something meant that the school would be flooded with butterflies.

[...]

Then one morning, we all knew it was to be.

Ellie came out of her classroom, almost ghost-white. She had just read in a magazine that the Holocaust Museum had decided to honor the 1.6 million children in a special way. They were going to use butterflies to represent the children.

She had never heard of this plan before her dream.

The article goes on to detail how, in a Disney-like twist of fate, the 1.6 million "butterflies" were supplied by way of drawings and the like donated by school children and others in a large-scale community drive. Cute, and a proud example of inventiveness and power-in-numbers; but I stayed fixated on the schoolteacher's synchronistic dream.

The newspaper article I'd synchronistically excavated from a trash bin was, in fact, about a synchronicity.

At once, I wrote a mental note: "butterfly newspaper synchro -- BLOG POST," with the last two words underlined and italicized and in fat bold type.

* * *

And still, there's more to this one, parenthetically, with each detail lending substance and unlikeliness (and Jung's "meaning") to the newspaper incident.

First, there is the fact that I was in that doctor's office in the first place -- because it was the wrong office.

The mix-up was complicated, and the fault of neither myself nor the two doctor's offices (the correct one, and the one I'd actually gone to at the appointed time). But, regardless, I had made an appointment at one branch of the joint office, then been given directions to another, different branch. The rest is irrelevant, for the point is that, through a series of unlikely and awkward events, I ended up at this other office, which had no record of my appointment -- but did have an insistently vocal newspaper in its waiting-room trash bin. And, of course, a chair with the appropriately themed butterfly print on the seat (a chair placed tactically to receive what I had to put on it, to boot).

(As it so happened,  I got to see a doctor there, anyway; she was between appointments, and her next was known to be chronically and dependably late, as I overheard from the two nurses at the front desk. Just another "stroke of luck," I guess.)

The second detail was, anecdotally, an article adjacent to "Butterflies and children," entitled "When a man finds his destiny." Going on the headline, I had the thought that this article would, by God, be about another synchronicity, as to really upgrade this incident, in double-whammy fashion; but not quite. However, the "destiny" article did contain the following paragraphs:

[...] yet [destiny] threw itself into his path, tackled him, and when he stopped wrestling against the mighty force, he saw he was staring right smack into the eye of what God had destined for him all along. Then he gave up the fight against it, embraced it, and found true contentment and happiness. He had arrived.

For that is what destiny truly is -- the soul's satisfaction of knowing that you are where you are meant to be. That from the moment that life was breathed into your nostrils and the pulse of blood began, there was a purpose and plan. There was a destination that awaited.

In the end, that part was, for me, the most numinous of all, bypassing even the butterfly bits, for that day, I certainly felt like my destiny was to synchronistically read a newspaper article about a synchronicity, by way of the "purpose and plan" of a bungled doctor's appointment, seeing me to the "wrong" office and its water cooler and its butterfly-imprinted chair. Then, "God" may have taken the form of an insistent newspaper in a trash bin, but it all fits in a poetic way, the same as how a dog possesses Buddha nature.

(And would you believe that there were even more synchronicities interwoven in this meta-incident, no less notable but just too subtle and subjective to convey? Yeah, definitely a BLOG POST.)