On Intuition & Coincidences

The Intu­itive nudges us toward the Divine. Always. They are both parts of the whole, after all. And this is how you know you can trust it. Ask your­self, would I be closer to divin­ity? If the answer is yes, rest assured you’ve tapped that deep know­ing well.

Intu­ition presents itself in dif­fer­ent ways. Some­times those bits of flying-about Uni­verse that catch in our dreams, visions, mind eyes and hearts, are messy to process. Some­times it’s painful to hear. Some­times it’s the obvi­ous you were avoid­ing. Some­times it’s the inspi­ra­tion you were wait­ing for.

And some­times it’s the tears at the gro­cery store. Push­ing us toward flour, salt and water.

Some­times it’s the bleak­ness of midwinter.

That if we can look past, would unveil, through the spit­ting snow and bit­ing cold, a kind of life still in the trees.

Some­times it’s sweet­ness in an indul­gence. A sacred moment that we can pro­long for hours through ingenuity.

And some­times it’s a skill we have to invoke, by cre­at­ing a space and wait­ing for the light — which is easy to find if we stand very still, and are will­ing to get very, very close.

I have an intu­itive sense for magic-making and for see­ing pat­terns that unfold into the future, like an origami chain build­ing in one direc­tion, one moun­tain or val­ley at a time. But it’s not some­thing I can do on auto-pilot (at least, not yet). I have to slow down, lis­ten care­fully and get present to make it work. My coin­ci­dences start to pile up when I choose instead to bury my head as though  it doesn’t exist. Being intu­itive isn’t always fun. Mostly it’s not fun at all. And I would like to pre­tend I could live in igno­rant bliss of the future, of my path, of your path; of the pain I know we will both expe­ri­ence. But then I read cards for some­one who is des­per­ately cling­ing to that igno­rance, and I real­ize that it’s not bliss­ful at all.

What is most impor­tant for you to remem­ber is that you are NOT CRAZY for lis­ten­ing to the voice of your inner self. Your intu­itive sense is per­haps the most impor­tant sense you can develop. Like our other senses, it is how we nav­i­gate our lives. How we make deci­sions. How we expe­ri­ence the sacred (or mun­dane) of our everydays.

How do you expe­ri­ence yours?

How to Do It All : pt. 1

The Moon is a lady. Her face, slip­ping through veils of wisp-tailed clouds. It was as it was meant to be. Her, in her full­ness. Me, arched back in bed. The cool swell of her light, right where I might best spy, lying there com­fort­ably in my tan­gle of blankets.

I always, when I plan magic like this, assume that the right rit­ual will some­how spill from head. I trust The Uni­verse. We have this thing, you know. What I need will come to me. So that night, under Her full round­ness, I found myself lying in bed, whis­per­ing a love spell… can you believe it?! I hardly can myself.

***

I am a handy lady, let’s just say. So when the sheetrock bath­room ceil­ing began to crum­ble and fall down, I did not take the advice of friends (“Here’s the num­ber of a guy I know...”), but instead went to the home improve­ment store. I always, when I plan magic like this, assume the solu­tion will just fall into my lap. So I milled about the aisles for a bit when I came upon the 1’x1’ ceil­ing tiles. Ah ha! This has got to be a bil­lion times eas­ier than hang­ing dry­wall over­head! I have installed tongue and groove floor­ing before, so the con­cept was sim­i­lar. I was sassy with sat­is­fac­tion of my bril­liance. Who needs a guy!? I can do it all. 

Fast for­ward to Sat­ur­day. I’ve got a few of those babies hang­ing on the ceil­ing. It looks… like it’s all com­ing together. I take a break and drink cof­fee. I think, why does any­one need any­one? I snap a pic­ture of my progress, so I can file it away in my scrap­book for later. I am a god­dess. After this, I’m plan­ning to bake a loaf of bread, change the oil in my car and cro­chet a fuck­ing doily.

Halfway through my project the ceil­ing gets… wonky, let’s just say. I real­ize I should have made sure I was work­ing on a level sur­face. I was unpre­pared for how crooked the cor­ners of the room were. I start to won­der if it’s actu­ally a two-person job, hold­ing the end pieces up, which seem hell-bent on pulling all my work down. Every­thing, sud­denly, is get­ting really metaphorical.

And that’s of course when it hits me. A mes­sage from The Uni­verse. A peek into my future. And it’s super incon­ve­nient because I can’t leave to go write it down, I have to hold these damn tiles up till the glue cures. So I’m stand­ing on this lad­der. In my bath­room. Hold­ing up the ceil­ing. My kids are fight­ing over Gold­fish crack­ers in the other room. And I’m hav­ing a stroke of brilliance.

Along with this, though, a grow­ing aware­ness that my ceil­ing project is going to fail. For what­ever rea­son, the cor­ners are now start­ing to sag. I hear the glue creak­ing and moan­ing. I don’t have enough arms to save the work. I whis­per a lit­tle prayer, release my grip, step down off the lad­der and cover my neck as the ceil­ing falls down on me.

Some­times all you can do is all you can do.

***

After I cleaned up the mess in the bath­room and show­ered, I told the kids we were going to a restau­rant for din­ner. This is a treat, if only because it can be har­row­ing to take both my wee babes to din­ner by myself. Mama needs a mar­garita was encoded in “How about Mex­i­can?” They were thrilled by the idea, so we went.

After a lovely din­ner, which they both ate like peo­ple even, the wait­ress stopped at my table to com­pli­ment me on how beau­ti­ful and well behaved my kids were (they really were inor­di­nately good). “You’re so blessed. SO BLESSED.” She repeated as if I needed the emphasis.

We all walked hand in hand to the car. The Uni­verse was prod­ding me again. A pur­pose tucked away in mind, the bless­ings of two small hands in my hands. I ori­ented myself, search­ing for the Moon in the night. Give me the love I need, I implored her full face a week ago. There she was, a wan­ing grin in the sky.

Tomor­row I’ll call a guy about the ceiling.

In consideration of three coincidences

I have two Kalan­choes in my house­plant col­lec­tion. One I have had for almost two years in Feb­ru­ary. Another I bought in Novem­ber. It did not occur strange to me that both were in bloom when I obtained them. I also don’t recall the process my first Kalan­choe went through after it stopped bloom­ing, but the plant looks very dif­fer­ent now than it did when I first got it (I assumed it was an off year for the dear plant). My sec­ond Kalan­choe stopped bloom­ing when I returned from my hol­i­day trav­els. The flow­ers were brown and shriv­eled. Sul­li­van men­tioned that it had died. I took it to the sink and began pinch­ing them off. Then I real­ized I didn’t know any­thing about these plants, so I did some research on the internet.

It turns out Kalanchoe’s are forced into bloom­ing out of sea­son through arti­fi­cial stim­u­la­tion by the com­mer­cial grow­ers. Appar­ently the process is “dif­fi­cult” though I couldn’t find a descrip­tion of exactly what was involved (closely con­trolled cli­mate, I imag­ine). And the result is that the plant will flower once, but is unlikely to flower again. The plants are there­fore con­sid­ered “throw­away” house­plants. How­ever some of the arti­cles say it’s pos­si­ble, since a Kalan­choe will nat­u­rally flower in the spring if left to it’s own devices, for it to bloom again. I trimmed the heads off my plant and made a spot on the table for it to rest dur­ing the winter.

What struck me about this expe­ri­ence, is that even when it’s not in bloom, my Kalan­choes are lovely lit­tle green liv­ing things, and I won­der how many of them are chucked out into the cold once their flow­ers begin to fall.

At the grocery.

Freyja was climb­ing out of the cart, Sul­li­van was run­ning cir­cles around me. The aisles were crammed full of peo­ple doing their shop­ping. I stood in the bread aisle, try­ing to decide which bread to buy.

I did not know which bread to buy.

There were per­haps a hun­dred dif­fer­ent vari­eties. Mul­ti­ple brands, “name brand” and generic, of the same type of bread. White. Wheat. Some mix­ture. Whole grain white. Whole grain wheat. Some com­bi­na­tion. Rye. Raisin. Sour­dough. All pack­aged in col­or­ful plas­tic bags. Why are there so many types of bread in the store? Who buys all these dif­fer­ent breads? Who buys the same bread in dif­fer­ent col­or­ful plas­tic bags? Why are all of these breads made and brought here?

I did not know which to buy.

The kids were ask­ing me to let them ride the mov­ing plas­tic horse in the front of the store. Many peo­ple were mov­ing close to me with their carts full of boxes of things and jars of stuff.

The breads were all bagged in dif­fer­ent col­or­ful bags.

A man was stock­ing the shelves. An older man was ask­ing the bread stocker about the bread. He was com­plain­ing that the brand on sale did not freeze well. That he sus­pected that it was more than a day old.

The bread stocker laughed, “Well I know it’s more than a day old. That’s why it’s all so cheap!”

All of the loaves of bread became Leggo blocks. Every­thing was plas­tic and mul­ti­col­ored. The man stock­ing the bread was a Leggo man. The old man was a Leggo man.

Tears came to my eyes. A Leggo woman with a full cart of Leggo blocks next to me whis­pered, “Are you okay?”

I said, “I don’t know which bread to buy.”

“Don’t stress out about it. Just pick one. They’re all the same, really.”

“Thank you, no.” I whis­pered. A pit grew in my stom­ach. I couldn’t feed my chil­dren plas­tic. I didn’t buy any bread.

The pic­ture above is not mine.

I set an alarm for 2:20 a.m. A time I fig­ured would give me some min­utes to dress, find my coat and cam­era and head out­side to watch the Quad­ran­tid meteor shower. Of course, five min­utes before my cell alarm went off, Sul­li­van ran into my room fright­ened from a night­mare. A few min­utes later, the curi­ous alarm woke him up com­pletely. I told him we were going to go out­side to look at mete­ors, a topic he has some inter­est in (as a dinosaur afi­cionado - have I men­tioned he’s 4?). We bun­dled up and went out into the back yard with our lit­tle dog.

The sky was cloudy and the city lights sent a haze over the moon, but I could see some stars and I could see Mars and what I sus­pected was Venus. I pointed these out to him (he was unim­pressed). After fif­teen or so min­utes, the dog started whin­ing to go inside. Sul­li­van started ask­ing me ques­tions like “Are you sure mete­ors are real?” in the same tone of voice he asks me about fairies, trolls, magic, Santa and the Greek gods I tell him sto­ries about. With the same skep­ti­cism that he asks, “Are you sure this plant is still alive?” With that same look he gives me when I am wip­ing my eyes in the gro­cery store because every­thing is made of plas­tic; his fruit­bat, card-throwing, gypsy mama, who has no answers, this time, but a string of ques­tions and coin­ci­dences that feel con­nected through the ether, ask­ing him to watch some end­less sky in the frigid cold for some mys­ti­cal phe­nom­ena that may not even exist in his world.

We did not see a sin­gle meteor after twenty min­utes, so we came inside, the dog, the boy and I. I put him to bed, but it was per­haps too late. He had trou­ble sleep­ing the rest of the night. I sat at the table, gnaw­ing on my deci­sions, some pit grow­ing in my stom­ach, retelling the entire story to a tired and spent houseplant.