Belly of the Whale

Synchronicity you won’t believe.


Let me list for you a little taste of the coincidences that have been happening to me recently. I swear this is all absolutely true, no exaggerations whatsoever. It is a bit crazy for sure.

Jan 28 - Feb 8

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Quick reference to the naming of the days of the week:
Most of the names come from Nordic mythology and some from Roman. The days were named after the “seven heavenly spheres” of the time (which were named after the gods).

Monday = Moon's day. Self explanatory
Tuesday = Tiwes' day. Mars in Germanic is Tiwes
Wednesday. Woden's day. In Germanic Woden or Odin or Othin is the equivalent to Mercury and Hermes.
Thursday. Thor’s day. Thor is the Norse equivalent to Jupiter (Roman) or Zeus (Greek).
Friday. Frigg-day. In Germanic Frigg is the name for Venus.
Saturday. Saturn's day Saturn is a Roman God
Sunday = Sun’s day. Again, self explanatory.
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So the crazy synchronic events of the last week or so...

--I already told the dream I had with my cousin—where she wouldn’t tell me who she was dating and I guessed who it was, and it was a certain boy that I have good cause to dislike. My blood ran cold. I have only ever met him once, I only know him through a few horror stories of friends. At ten that morning, Thor’s-day I met with a professor to see if I could join his class. He says, “well four people who are registered in the class didn’t show, yeah, ‘John Doe’ (Morpheus, Dream boyfriend) didn’t show up. I jumped. Why, of all four people, did he name the one guy I had had a dream about the night before? Why that name—I don’t have any reason to know him. So strange. I thought he showed up for class but it turned out not to be him—a different guy with the same name!

--Saturday night I had a dream where James and I were looking out of the window of a Victorian-style house, looking at a flock of pigeons in the yard pecking at something or other. When I woke up, this was still fresh in my mind. I walk into the kitchen to get a drink and the phone rings—it’s James.


Oh, it gets much better. . . .

--A couple of weeks ago I saw a movie based on the novel “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas. I loved it and watched it again a few nights later. Since then, it continues to pop up. Moon’s-day’s night I was reading Joyce’s “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” and there is a whole section with Stephan Dedalus’ dad reading Dumas’ novel, talking about “the dark avenger,” Dantes. And then Tuesday in the mail I got “Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umberto Eco—and on back it says, “An intellectual adventure story, as sensational, thrilling and packed with arcane as ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ or ‘The Count of Monte Cristo.’” I guess I’ve gotta read this book—that’s pretty high praise.

[an almost identical event as this will happen later in the week]

--Tiwes-day. I walked into my friend Nic’s apartment and see a new poster on the wall; it’s a piece of artwork, nice but plain, just two colors. Facetiously, I say to her, “Nice, it’s very. . . orange and yellow.” Then I walk up closer and look down at the fine print to see who created it, and it is called “Orange and Yellow,”—that was the title. I jumped again.

--Woden’s-day. Reading Dante’s Purgatorio, I got to Canto 28 which takes place in the Garden of Eden. When Dante meets Matilda, I couldn’t help but feel that there was something sensuous about it. I started to think about how I would possibly discuss this with my class; I turn the page; I thought, “this Canto is ‘pregnant’”—meaning that is was Canto was embedded with meaning, but also using the word because of its sexual connotation. I look down at the page and start to read as I was saying it I then read the word “impregnate” in the paragraph I just started.

[I know this isn't the most exciting synchronicity--but this too happens twice]

--Woden’s-day. When I was in Nic’s apartment, I met this guy, a really good man, named Dustin. He let me borrow a DVD of his that contains ten or so lectures on philosophy. I thought this was great—a lot was existentialism which I am studying right now. I also thought this was such a cool idea, a company, The Teaching Company, taping lectures to sell.

How this happened I don’t know, but Thor'sday, only eighteen hours later, in the mail I received a catalogue from The Teaching Company which lists all of their lectures for sale. Until dustin, I had never heard of them. I don’t know why I was sent their catalogue. I had never heard of them before Dustin lend me the DVD.

[Friday. My good friend Lydia is going on a date with the guy who owns the DVD-not Dustin-but the guy Dustin got the disk from, a guy named Justin. So wierd. Read on.]

--Thor’s-day. After a long awaited jaunt into the Rattlesnake for a run, I went to Red’s Bar to meet Rachel. Her soccer team was having a fund raiser and had a bunch of chili and cheap beer. Rach and I were small-talking when I brought up my brother and how much he liked her friend, Tauk—and how much I liked him as well. We were still talking about him when I looked up and saw him walking through the crowd toward us.

--Thor’s-day again. I checked my email and found a message from a friend to enquire about a boat named “Aeolus.” I recognized the name; we had looked at her before, but it struck me in a different way; I didn't know what the word itself meant. I wasn’t familiar with the term, though it smacked of classical Greek. Later in the day, when I opened up “Ulysses” to read, I noticed a chapter heading, “Aeolus.” I suddenly got a real good feeling about that boat. (Though I think that it has already been sold.) The word is Greek and is from Homer’s “Odyssey.” Aeolus was the God of Wind.

--Saturn’s-day. This is another good one:

After a great day of skiing at Discovery, Will, two friends and I have the two hour drive home. Just outside of Clinton, Will’s friend Drew starts talking about literature, how he thinks that if you really want to learn, you have to read. He first was ranting on about how he doesn’t like John Updike because some of how some of the stuff he writes “is just freaky.” But then he went on to say one of his favorite authors is C.S. Lewis. He couldn’t remember the name of one book in particular that he had in mind. I then mentioned that I had often wanted to read “Mere Christianity,” which was a piece by Lewis. “That’s the one,” he said—“that’s a great book.”

We pulled in to Missoula late; I grab the Hoopdee from the Law School where I had parked it in the morning and drove home. I parked and picked up my mail on the way into my house, just a small package and one parcel of junk mail. I assumed that the package was one of the books I was still waiting on (I buy books online), but then I noticed the address in the corner was my aunt’s. This was unusual. I got inside, talked to Widge, gave him a little dinner and then sat down to open the letter. My aunt is a staunch Christian, orthodox in everyway—fundamental Baptist I think. I thought back to my conversation in the car; I thought of Lewis. Sure enough, as I tore the brown paper away I saw the name C.S. Lewis, and then “Mere Christianity.”

If this weren’t enough to be shocking, one of the quotations on the back was written by John Updike, Drew's nemesis.

And lastly, Moon's Day. To end where I began. I read the word "enprenate" after having thought "pregnant." Last night I was looking up words I didn't know from a list I keep. I was having trouble with "apostasis." So I looked up stasis, hypostasis, apostacy, permastasis--until I started to get a feel for it.
I left my computer; I thought I should read a little before I went to bed. A book that I was reading over break and have put down for three weeks now is "Doctor Faustus." I need to have it finished in a few week and still have 250 pages to go. I open up to the last page I read over break. On that page is a word highlighted in flourescent pink, which means I don't know what the word means.

The word is "metastasis."


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"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did
do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe
harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain