Lao Textiles

Lao Textiles / Carol Cassidy weaving (Topic Asia Magazine)

Synchronicity is an overused word, and the fact that Carl Jung defined it as “meaningful coincidence” makes it seem even more overused than it is. “Meaningful” is in the eye of the beholder—a synchronicity is the correspondence of some external event with an internal state of the psyche, and therefore extremely individual, and not easily shared.

I think what follows, though, is one of the more convincing ones.

Here I was, at 1:30 this afternoon, doing a quick check of the wonderful ClubFreetime site to see if there are any events I’ll want to go to tomorrow. I had no plans to go into Manhattan today, but I skimmed today’s listings anyway.

Whoa. In the shop of the Asia Society, Park Avenue at 70th Street, 12:30 to 3:30: “Woven Silks of Laos with Designer Carol Cassidy.”

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Root shock

[This post was originally titled “Where (Somebody) Hamlet led me next”]

I know these “little synchronicities” can seem to get out of control, but I like to record them, because the accumulation becomes impressive even if the individual connections are so-so.

I wanted to dress up the long “‘Hamlet’ and hamlets” post with one more image, so I went looking for one of the green road signs mentioned in the Wikipedia article that I quoted from (search term: hamlet “road sign” “new york”). What I got instead was a lot of links to “Newest Hacked Road Sign Warns Of New York’s Imminent Demise” and simpler variations on the theme “New York Is Dying.” This strikes me as a small synchronicity because, just yesterday, as I was searching the New York Daily News site for something entirely different, I came upon a small, oddly curated slide show titled “New York nabes dying.” The fact that this expresses the feeling that’s had me thinking of leaving for a long time is a bigger synchronicity (“meaningful coincidence”) for me.

It’s a feeling apparently shared by a number of people who blogged about the hacked “New York is dying” electronic road sign (and made T-shirts, maternity shirts, and tank tops of it). One blogger agreeing with the sign’s sentiment linked to a 2009 conference on a concept I’d never heard of before: the Serial Displacement Conference of the New York Academy of Medicine Working Group on Serial Displacement.

“Hamlet” and hamlets

I woke this morning (4/13)

hearing the name (Something) Hamlet, probably at the end of a brief conversation between a man and a young-ish blonde woman with a high ponytail.

In other words, “Hamlet” was someone’s last name in my dream.

A series of associations came to mind right away: 1> Shakespeare’s play. 2> I have a videotape I bought recently titled Discovering Hamlet. (Then later) 3> I’d love to be able to get my videos, cassettes, and LPs recorded to a hard drive before I have to move. It would make one less set of stuff to pack.

That “have to move” part was roaring through my mind as I went to sleep (or attempted to) last night. I’d called my landlord in the afternoon to report a couple of things that need taking care of, and got his secretary, as usual. “He hasn’t talked to you?” she asked. Um, no. Then she dropped this bomb: “He wants to sell the apartment.”