What does it mean?


You've been thinking about somone. Somone you haven't heard from in weeks, months or even years, and within a short period of time you receive some kind of communication from them. Twice I received letters from a woman I had worked with years before within a day of thinking about her for the first time in a long period of time. The second instance I even stopped in front of the mailbox and had the idea that there was going to be a letter from her because it had already happened once and sure enough, there was a letter in the box. My question is obvious. What is this phenomenon that boils down to a "Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing"?

Is it God? Is it the Universe? Entanglement? Are our brains Quantum computers? Is it the "Law of Attraction"?, or is it all nothing more than a coincidence? Carl Jung called it synchronicity and it happens all the time. Does it happen to you? It happens to me and I find myself wondering "What does it mean?". Decide for yourself as you follow my diary of another "Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing", also known as a S.C.O.U.T!

Friday, February 8, 2013


November 26, 2010 – “Blow”: the word can mean many things as in “blow your mind”, or “blow a hole through everything you thought you knew”, or….

Background – Thanksgiving family visit up north and I’m hanging out in front of the TV with my brother-in-law.  We start talking about our favorite actors and settle on someone we have in common, Johnny Depp.  That naturally led us to our favorite “Depp” movies, mine being “Chocolat”.  My brother-in-laws favorite movie was one of the less popular ones – so much so that he couldn’t remember the name of it!  He just kept saying “you know the one, with Al Pacino”… this was absolutely no help at all in retrieving the title of this movie.  About this time, my son wandered through the room (much to my relief) and I recruited him to help his uncle with the obsessive mission of figuring out the name of this movie.   He came up with the title “Blow”, also a good movie, but not my brother-in-laws favorite (you get that if you saw “Chocolat” ;)!!  I finally picked up a magazine in order to end the co-dependency that I had been saddled with in my brother-in-laws pre-occupation with solving this memory Charlie horse.  I didn’t really care all that much and therefore left him to his brooding and muttering “… Al Pacino…not one of the more popular ones…come on, it was “Jimmy” or “Johnny” somethin…”

S.C.O.U.T. – A few moments passed (maybe 10-15 min) and my brother-in-law thankfully became distracted by looking for a movie to watch on the cable guide.  He was scrolling through when he stopped and gave a little laugh “huh!  That’s it!  That’s the movie, “Donnie Brasco” I dropped my magazine and looked at the TV screen, that old familiar tingle creeping up my spine.  Sure enough, there on the guide, playing at 10:30 am was the Johnny Depp movie “Donny Brasco”, the one with Al Pacino.  Uncanny right?!!  I mean, go to your TV and check the guide for this movie right now.  I would bet cold hard cash that you can’t find it.  The tingle creeping up my spine hit my scalp and carpeted my head, making my hair stand on end…the movie playing two slots above “Donnie Brasco” was the movie “Blow”. 

Now, there was no sign of “Chocolat”, which made me wonder.  Perhaps I wasn’t observed in this Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing because I didn’t really care.  It was my brother-in-law and my son who put the mental muscle behind the search.  Perhaps. 

“I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity, such as the sudden appearance of purple Englishmen, and a reported growth of hair on the bald head of a mummy. But my liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in the relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences.”

“What if some of them should not be coincidences?”

Charles Fort (1874-1932) in: Wild Talents.