*Synchronicity*

.... is what i yearn for in my days. i love that feeling when the unexpected seems so perfect and the connection you make between them seems so re-affirming. along the lines of paulo coehlo's Alchemist, i think i often consider moments of synchronicity to be good omens. like if something stands out as beautifully coincidental, it's really telling me that i'm exactly where i should be, i'm on the right path. even if something doesn't seem to have a huge impact on my life, but makes me stop and laugh and think "wow, that was crazy," i like to take it as a little gift from the universe that i'm being reminded that we are all connected and i'm exactly where i should be.

on my first visit to barcelona, i was walking down the crowded calle ferran of el barrio gotico with my mom and exchanged a quick double take with a girl. we both stopped and turned around and then realized that we had been next door neighbors in college. her name is Lark. just moments after that co-incidental sighting (we could have been anywhere else in the city, but were right there at the same time), my mom and i turned the corner and walked down La Rambla only to look up an see a Hotel Lark stand out to us on our right. weird, no? didn't really mean much, but it made me happy and i knew that barcelona was a place that was right for me to be (i ended up moving there the following year and having even more eerie moments like this).

in fact when i lived there i was a nanny for a little girl named ruby. (how i got the job was totally serindipitious, but that's another story). anyways, when i moved back to the bay in 2005, i searched for abother babysitting gig, and the first one i got was for a special little baby named ruby! Ruby 1 and Ruby 2! i must be doing something right!

i think a mother's intuition can serve as a good example of being open to synchronictic moments... my mom used to tell me the story of when i was a little girl, just old enough to sleep in my own bed, she woke up a couple of times in the night to run into my room and catch me in a fall, midway from my bed to the ground. what caused her to jump out of bed at just the right second when i was sound asleep?

i feel like i've experienced a lot of synchronictic moments in my life often involving meeting a new and very special person by being at the right place at just the right time. one time, in 2001, i was at a dance club in san francisco where i knew absolutely no one, except my friend that i came with, and was complaining to her about how uninteresting everyone looked. then, i spotted this sparkly girl who i knew i had to talk to. she had the same reaction and within minutes we were talking each other's heads off. her name is Jeannine and it turned out that she was from philly and had just moved to sf a few weeks before. eventually it got out that i had gone to uc santa cruz and that she had visited santa cruz the year prior and stayed at this girl elizabeth's house who was friends with the boy, nevada, whom jeannine was dating and planning on moving to sf to be with. elizabeth was actually one of my best friends from santa cruz and was living in the apartment below me in san francisco, and nevada was the boy i had a crush on, soon to be my boyfriend for a year. he and jeannine had had a falling out (i had never heard about her) and she decided to move out to sf anyways. these crazy connections between us gave us all the more reason to listen to our intuition and be friends. it was one of the most magical nights i've ever experienced, and to this day, while some of the friendships we had in common have come and gone, we remain one of the most important people in each other's lives. aaah, i love that story!

i think that if you recognize the omens that present themselves to you, more synchronicity will follow. it's being open to it that makes it exist, right? it's fun if you let synchronicity into your life... besides being entertaining, it often gives you little answers where you are least expecting them.