it feels as if synchronicity is a magical result of traveling, but i’m sure it must be more a matter of having opened, surrendered, to what’s happening, as one does in travel, and the fact that one has more time to be mindful and pay attention to how things are unfolding. nonetheless, it has been impressing me of late - a very mundane example being that of my evolving reading list. after finishing the books i brought with me, and one dense tome of historical fiction written by a new zealand author that i bought from the sale rack of a used book store in raglan, i decided to give my reading list over to fate, just to see what the universe, speaking through the shelves of every hostel i stayed in, would offer up for my edification and enjoyment. it has been uncanny - one week i felt myself quite preoccupied with musings on mortality, in what felt like a very healthy and positive way; at the end of said week i stayed in a hostel where, so weirdly, and hilariously, i found not one or two, but EIGHT novels with the word “death” or “dead” in the title!!! i didn't actually read any of them, but had fun stacking them together in a new and special Death Section of the bookshelf - meant to take a picture but forgot.
another time, i had Emile Zola’s “Germinal” come into my mind completely out of the blue, which i probably read 30 years ago and have probably not had much cause to think of since, but now felt driven to read again ( to the degree that i thought i might even have to “break the rules” and buy)…lo and behold, tho’, at the next hostel, what should i find on the book trade shelf, but… (oh, and it is such a great and brilliant book!!!) then, on the morning i was in the auckland airport with “extra” time on my hands before my Bali flight (that day, by the way, ended up being 24 waking hours long : ///), and was poised to enter into this new phase of the journey, with its meditation retreats and rededication of my focus to that end, what do i find the in the airport bookstore (kind of amazing in and of itself) but Christine Toomey’s “The Saffron Road - following Buddha’s daughters”, which is all about the women who choose to dedicate their lives to the Buddhist path, the abbeys and monasteries they live in/run worldwide, and the historical and present-day role of women in Buddhist communities…! it’s a phenomenal book (i read 300 pages straight without being able to stop!!!)… but have i ever seen it in a bookstore before now???… truly - anyone out there interested in the Buddha’s teachings, in dedication, in the triumph of human spirit over overwhelming adversity, and kick-ass women… READ THIS BOOK!!!! lastly (for now), and more of a weird fluke, but what Australian city, of all the Australian cities there are, should i randomly be rerouted through but the one and only Australian city i’ve ever been in, namely Adelaide, where, in 2000, Geoffrey and i came to perform our duet “wingspan” in an arts festival…it’s a little kooky…:) Felt like a wee pilgrimage flight in homage to my beautiful brother and dance partner… i guess my point, if indeed i have one, is that i am getting the sense that the universe is perhaps not the random haphazard place that it can seem, but that actually there is flow and a harmony at work, and it is a blessing to experience this poetry in motion., and life is pretty awe-inspiring… (think i’ll get that job at hallmark…?…! :) i think i have always sensed the possibility of this deep organizing principal, been attracted to the idea (my serial obsessions with quantum physics, fractal geometry, etc), but to just be in it and feel it is another thing… …obviously books on shelves is the least of it, just, as i said, a simple and mundane example :)
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