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What is going on with these incredible coincidences I keep having?

5/28/2016

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Recently I attended an evening event downtown. Linda wasn't interested, so I went alone. I took the bus down as it was such a hot day, but planned to walk home in the cool of the evening, and was looking forward to that pleasant hour.


At the event, I met some of my young poetry friends. Which was nice, but before it was over, they wandered off together, leaving me behind, which reminded me of my own youth back in those hippie years and my similar reactions then to people of my parents' generation. Anyway, afterwards I wandered around downtown alone, a bit lonely in that beautiful evening air, and more so by the minute. Me there and Linda at home. I guess I did a loop of about eight blocks, finally arriving back where I had started, more or less, where the buses stop. So then I had to decide whether I to walk or not. I thought what a waste of a heavenly walk if I were emotionally down the whole way. Yet, what a waste too to take the bus. In the end, I decided to get home with Linda as soon as possible. My mood would change quickly.

My bus came in about ten minutes and I got on. It was surprisingly full. The long front benches were filled. I glanced back and could see the occasional single empty aisle seat. The first one had the guy's bag in it. What a selfish guy, I thought. The next one was beside a very wide person, so I climbed the steps up into the back. There were two isle seats, the first one wouldn't work and then I came to the last space, in one of the last rows. The woman had her purse on her lap. As I was beginning to sit down, I looked up at her face. It was Charmaine E. Elijah! She's the indigenous poet who acted as the organiser of our last open mic, which featured indigenous poetry and history. As we talked, the unlikelihood of us sitting there together began to sink in. The chances against it are astronomical! There had to be some person there. A random person. But somebody I know? And, most especially, Charmaine?

Charmaine is one of my favourite people. She is truly one of the wisest people I've ever met, someone who has lived a life of wisdom; she hasn't just thought it. Her wisdom is all the more interesting because some of it originated from her indigenous background, some from contemporary society, and some simply from her own struggle with life. An even more odd thing about running into her like this was that that very day I had thought I should contact her again soon. We're planning a lengthy interview with her, a live one, taped. At the open mic, I had asked her if she would be interested and she had said she could do it. But because of some other stressful things that happened at the open mic, I had been wondering if she might have changed her mind. So, on the bus, amongst a lot of other things we talked about, which cheered me up enormously, I asked her about the interview, and she said she was still interested in doing it. (We're doing an extended interview with the indigenous historian David D. Plain first, and in the process learning, hopefully, something about indigenous history and culture, which should be helpful in the interview with Charmaine.)

Anyway, I told Linda about this chance meeting when I got home, also my sister by phone, and they were both as astonished as I was. It was as if the whole evening had been set up just so I would end up taking that bus and have to sit in that seat! But of course, that's nuts. I'm not the centre of the universe. Life doesn't revolve around me. And anyway things just don't happen that way. Everything has its immediate cause and effect. Period.

But still, this kind of thing happens so often in my life that I've practically come to expect it. For instance, back in my youth when I was trying to backpack across Canada I got so used to being rescued from situations that would otherwise have killed me or at least have totally derailed my trip, rescued by very last-minute occurrences, out-of-the-blue situations, that I actually began to lose my fear. I began to assume that something would come up in the final seconds. And yes it always did. And these things have happened all my life ever since. (My cynical but realistic self says that the only people who exult in all the rescuing coincidences in their lives are the few survivors, those who happened to have the dice falling their way so far. So far. The other risk takers were all eliminated along the way. They're not talking.)

Anyway, for me, sitting with Charmaine on the bus was my latest example. If we hadn't met there, I don't think I would have died, or even have been derailed. But it was Charmaine! Who knows what that could mean for the future?

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Paula Dawn Lietz believe it - it was indeed to happen 
everything about it - set you there 
wonderful

Unlike · Reply · 2 · 15 mins

Donna Allard we forget one IMP rule of the universe... let life happen, we must stop controling it or beautiful moments will occur less or maybe not at all.. wink emoticon
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 10 mins

Stan Burfield
 That's what I've found for sure. Well, more a combination. Make things happen, but at the same time be open to what IS happening.

Meredith Moeckel
 Really a lovely story Stan? Wasn't it you who recently wrote on the topic of synchronicity? I have had similar things happen to me quite often, and have taken to simply smiling to myself..... Anyways, I'm sharing a couple of quotes regarding synchronicity smile emoticon (well it won't allow me to share two at once, so I'll attach one after this!)
Like · Reply · 41 mins

Meredith Moeckel
Like · Reply · 1 · 41 mins

Scott Alderson Calvin's theory of Predestination. Whatever, it's all good as they say.
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 35 mins

Stan Burfield It's very difficult for me to believe this, and yet, how to explain it. Yes, the previous one of these that I wrote about here was about April 20th, a month ago.
Like · Reply · 35 mins

Donald Brackett A nice story. A basic example of Jung's theory of Synchronicity. Not hard to believe at all really, upon investigation.
Like · Reply · 28 mins

Stan Burfield Well, I have pretty much of a scientific view of reality. Jung's ideas were more religious than scientific. Science just doesn't allow for this kind of thing. So I have to try to explain it all in terms of simple cause and effect in a complex world. The problem is that when it happens too often it definitely starts to become a bit weird.
Like · Reply · 18 mins

Stan Burfield And anyway I know there are things happening that science doesn't explain. Like telepathy. However, seeing something like the world organised (by who or what?) so that Charmaine and I would be sitting together is a whole different level of impossibility to what telepathy requires.
Like · Reply · Just now

Stan Burfield
 Here's what I believe: We have to look beyond our beliefs and favoured ideas and opinions to find out how the world works. If we don't, we don't see anything except our feelings. And there's only one method humanity has ever devised for seeing beyond our feelings into objective reality. That's science. Science doesn't know everything yet. But what it does know, and has thoroughly tested, is true. Anything we believe that contradicts those findings simply isn't true.
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The memories, situations that led to London's upcoming indigenous poetry event

4/27/2016

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 I recall the evolution of London's upcoming indigenous poetry and history event. Stan discusses how it came about and why, and reads his poem Moccasin Bells, which contains the memory which started the whole thing. The London Open Mic Poetry event is on May 4th, 2016, at Mykonos Restaurant, London, ON. at 7:00 pm. It will feature Charmaine E. Elijah, historian David D. Plain, poet Gloria Alvernaz Mulcahy and other indigenous poets, readers and musicians.
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Moccasin Bells (updated version) 

2/6/2016

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(I read this at the open mic last night, to a good response from the audience. It had originally been written as prose, then I turned it into a poem, then back to prose, then a poem, and now I guess it's a prose poem, or at least as close to one as I can come. I posted it here a while ago but it's fairly different now, and I feel okay good about it, so here's the newest version. It's about my experience as a little boy at an Indian rodeo near our farm in Alberta. And thinking about that, I've been mulling over the idea of having an open mic with the feature being, possibly, several Native poets. We'll see.)
.
Moccasin Bells
.
Out at the Hobbema Indian Rodeo, a little white farm boy sits expectantly right down on the front bench of the bleachers, legs nearly touching the fence, while up behind him, his broad mother worries beside her blind husband, a man who can only listen, tightly wrapped in his suit and Western string tie.

The boy leans forward between two slow-talking Indians, huge and heavy in dark plaid and black hats. He is glad he left his holster and silver six shooter at home this year.

The air is still, its scent of sun-dried farm dirt as light as feathers. Even the harrowed corral is waiting, its dark clumps flattened for the coming of the horses, the spray of their hooves. The only movements are behind the gate, dark faces, arms tight on ropes. He listens for the horn, wanting that surprise again of some local native youth, a guy from the pool hall, one he would never have noticed in town. The gate moves and now here he comes flying from the chute up on the back of a pounding, kicking, whirlwind. The boy is standing, seeing the power of the arm, its hand clenched down, not slipping, forcing the rider upright, other hand flashing above, legs flying in the leaps, all with the same determination and skill as the best Texas cowboys at the big stampede back in Ponoka.

Finally the chuckwagon race, always the ultimate event, but here just three brown wooden wagons, the old-fashioned farm kind with seats and wheels and nothing else, no canvas covers, no fancy logos, slowly rolling out, and in the seats, three native farm boys holding back their horses until that horn sounds, and the earth shudders under hooves like hammers, and the drivers' long arms whip down their reins, lanky legs straining against the boards, black hair flying as they careen tightly around those two barrels, then thunder off together into the straightaway.

Mouth open, adrenaline pumping. That one moment out on that reserve.

Wandering then, as the evening cools his young spirit, he hears the drums begin, and the chanting -- hi ya ya ya hi ya ya ya -- a circle of men and women drumming and chanting together, and he is there standing on the grass between these tall dark people, in the arc of their canvas and skin tents, and as his legs begin to follow the rhythm in the light of the fire a warrior moves from the shadows in beaded buckskin and feathers stepping slowly into a dance, and with each touch and tap of his feet the sudden rhythmic jangle of bells on his moccasins joins the beat of the drums and the chant as it slides into song, its words from another world, but the rhythms make sense to the boy's young ears, and the movements of the dancer, his head down and down, then up, his feet tapping, stomping, tangling through the beat, all this builds a home in the boy's mind, far from his own, yet right there in front of him.
​
And as the decades pass, as he dodges, back-pedals and leaps his way through stressful white culture, its continual attack and defence, its judgements -- always there is this peaceful place, the jangling moccasins, soft tap of feet, the communal drumming, the communal chant.

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Meredith Moeckel, Raven Black, Larry Burfield and 9 others like this.
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Patricia Black Wonderful idea, Stan!
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 4 February at 22:39

Magnus Grendel Samson Coleman YOU HAD A GREAT READ WITH IT STAN, AS WELL...
Like · Reply · 5 February at 12:55

Stan Burfield Thanks Magnus. Between you and I we did a very fast transition from Mocassin Bells to Decibels smile emoticon
Like · Reply · 1 · 5 February at 13:07
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