Serious synchronicities

[Mr G]

This is addressed to you, Mr X, but I hope everyone will join the conversation.

I said in another post that I had some synchronicities occur around emotionally charged events, and I would like to elaborate on that here. It's a long story, but it involves your good self as well as ju4o in very strange ways, so I hope you'll read it.

Three years ago, when you were Aristide and I a dupe, we were having this same conversation over at SR. The date was 11 Jan 2011 (or 11/1/11 if you will), the time 11:04. I just noticed that now. This is what you said, in the thread Remember what the dormouse said:

Hello Dupe,

Well the Frequencys of Those Syncs, If they Meant Something, Would Mean Something. It Could Just be You Becoming More aware Of How Everything Is Connected or Something, Like the Frequancy Is you. But We Dont' know If things Mean Something wether often Or Not, So It Seems To Be The Sticking Point, Not Knowing.

I was talking about synchronicities a lot and was then, as now, a little embarrassed by it.

Well As Far As The Puncline, Due To Youre' Referecnce To Your Apple Holding Avatar, I got a Funny Sync Too. A few hours Before Reading that post, I Was Playing And Video Game, And enjoying it, But There Was This Puzzle. There Were Old Paintings And 5 of Them Had the Same Pattern Which I Had to Find. At First I thought it Was Tits, As There Was Lots Of Nakeidity in those Old Paintings. But That Was wrong, And I Couldnt' Figure It Out. But the Pattern Was the Paintings With People with Apples, in hands or near.

That day, a tuesday, was the day after my work year started. On monday, we had worked out a registration timetable which meant we'd be off for several hours between shifts. A colleague twisted my rubber arm to get me to go AWOL. He took me to a toy store because he collected model cars. On the wall was a poster for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. It seemed strange. It was like I was watching a 3D movie and this thing kept poking out at me. I stared at it for minutes, it was talking to me but I couldn't understand the language. We left.

Anyway The Game Was Assassins Creed 2. I dont' Normally have time To Play Through Whole Games like that but I enjoyed the Story of AC 1 and the second Is much Better. Funny that I remeber You Saying You Tried The Avatar Game and It Was bad, As I Remebered you when There Was An Video Trailer for the Avatar Game In the AC2 menus. The Game Is Sort Of Based on An Guy Recovering Past Life / Genetic Memories Thru and Technology, And Instead of Dying for example, you "lose Sync" with The Memory. Synchronising is An Constant Part of The Game as An General System.

When I read this, I figured perhaps I had a foreshadowing of your synchronicity. Something else bothered me. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, was not named Assassin's Creed 3. (It was followed by Assassin's Creed Revelations and then only came Assassin's Creed 3.) Something bothered me about the numbering... but the moment passed and I forgot about it.

A few months passed. The colleague I went AWOL with registered his son at our college. I was against this, I felt he wasn't ready... he hadn't finished school but we had programmes that accepted learners at that level. I thought his dad did it to save money. He was a handsome kid. When he was with his dad, you sometimes got the impression that he was the adult and his dad a big kid. We spoke occasionally, but I started avoiding him and his dad because I felt so strongly that they were doing the wrong thing... robbing him of at least one more year of childhood.

Then, one day out of the blue, he called me on my cellphone. He asked me a very strange question: "I'm sorry to bother you, but do you have Assassin's Creed 3?" I was flabbergasted. He had never called me before, and while we did once have a conversation about games, I didn't know why he would think I would have that game. I said, "Sorry, no", he said "OK, thanks". For the next few minutes my head was rushing. I felt that something strange had just occurred. Why did he call me? Why that specific game and why did he get the numbering wrong, something that specifically bothered me that day in the toy store with his father. I knew something was wrong.

This was a friday. That saturday night he would crash the car he was too young to drive into a tree and pass away. With no identification on him, his dad would only discover this that tuesday.

End of part one.

[Mr G]

This is not yet part two. Like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, it falls between numbered posts. This is my post from Sustained Reaction on that day in 2011.

Hi Tom. Well yes, of course you are f....ing special and we all love you for it.

I wasn't going to say something, 'cause I'm actually getting increasingly bored and embarrassed with this. Since you expressed your specialness, I wondered if you might not appreciate this report after all.

While reading Aristide's account of Assassin's Creed 2, whose main character is called Ezio Auditore da Firenze (Ezio Auditore of Florence), and simultaneously watching on my PC TV a program on BBC Knowledge called The Story of Science, which at the time was recounting the story of how Galileo Galilei (of Florence) made his first telescope with an organ pipe and some lenses he ground with cannonballs, I thought of the time when I myself was playing Assassin's Creed 2 some months ago.

I was visiting the folks that weekend and saw that on National Geographic channel there would be a program about Florence quite late, around 11:30 if I recall. My mom really wanted to watch it because they had been to Florence quite recently and wanted to know more about the city. I wanted to see how it compared to the Assassin's Creed game environment. While we were all waiting for the show which started much later, I changed the channel to a science program whose name escapes me now. It was about astronomy, and it wasn't long before we were treated to an explanation of how Galileo (of Florence) shook up the orthodoxy with his discovery of non-geocentric orbits, specifically the moons of Jupiter. This show was so damned interesting, but unfortunately, my stomach was acting up and I had to remove myself to the privy. As I sat down, mad at my mom for only having gardening magazines in the bathroom, I opened a copy of Garden and Home magazine, where I promptly discovered, on the page that I had opened it on, that the Walnut tree's scientific name is Juglans, meaning "Jupiter's Nuts".

The show about Florence later also had quite a bit to say about Galileo as well, as one of the city's most famous citizens. Back in the future (yesterday), I found myself in a toy store with a colleague of mine who was buying model cars for his collection, staring intently at a poster for the game Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for a good minute while wondering if I am now getting too old to play games. Admittedly, this was several hours before I read Aristide's post about Assassin's Creed 2, so I'm sure this doesn't count as a coincidence. Does it?

Well, let's have a toast on our specialness, and let's hope that this is going to be a special year for us all. In a good way.

Peace.

[Mr X]

hello mr g,

i am posting to say - continue.
looking forward to part 2.

i can remember us talking about ac on sr, as each time i played it after that (brotherhood, revelations, ac3, ac4) it popped into my head. i remembered those quoted posts, wondered what dupe is up to these days, and reminisced in good times at sr. i also did wonder if i missed something with what you said at the time. (when it pops into my head it is usually the story of you looking at the poster, at first)

jupiters nuts sounds like an exclamation ron burgundy would say.

well i guess i should get into the freedom cry dlc thats been sitting on my hard drive for a while.

mr x.

[Mr G]

And so it was in the year of our lord 2011 that none of us posted any longer at that accursed place. I felt no great sense of loss, save for not being able to read more posts by ra6as and Aristide. It was also my only opportunity to talk about that side of my interests... the mysterious side of life. I had never known anyone with whom I could discuss such things before. At least not for more than a few minutes at a time...

...but I lie. There was one such person.

As a student, a friend and I went up a hill to partake of power plants. We were to meet other friends of his. We met two gentlemen: a jolly rotund one that, under the influence, appeared like a joyous buddha, and an unkempt crusty punk replete with wallet chain and hand-drawn T-shirt that said "Nazi punks fuck off!"

The conversation turned to spooky matters. The round one complained about a ghost in his bed. The skeptic in me kicked in: "That's just sleep paralysis, man!" The punk agreed, "I'm not saying there's no such thing, but that sounds really typical of a sleep paralysis episode." We continued to argue the case together. I was quite taken aback, no one ever agreed with me like that, or knew what the hell I was talking about half the time. Worse, I would make an obscure Douglas Adams reference, and he'd complete the joke. I had never met someone who had even heard of Beck, we were alternately quoting lines of pseudolyrics.

I'm a driver, I'm a winner
Things are gonna change, I can feel it

We became fast friends.  He gave me a photocopied book, painstakingly hand leather bound and made to look exactly like a bible. It was called "Sex, Drugs and Magick: A journey beyond limits". To return the favour, I gave him A Separate Reality. We started working for his brother, shared digs and talked incessantly about the world behind the veil...

...and, unfortunately, both developed a devastating narcotics habit. I managed to drag myself out of it, got another job, finished my studies. He was not as lucky. I moved to another city. Last I heard about him, a former colleague told me "I ran into him... he didn't look like himself."

Many years passed. After we all stopped posting at SR, ju4o sent me an email to say that he had started a forum and that Aristide among others was posting there. Unfortunately, I had created that email address for the sole purpose of communication with j4 when we were still at SR, and didn't think I'd use it again after we all left. For some reason, I had to register online for something, and thought of using that address so I wouldn't get my main address spammed up. I thus discovered the message late, and when I got here Mr X had stopped posting. I had a few interesting discussions here, but got the idea that since Mr X stopped posting and with Tosk and Merlin rather scarce, j4 wasn't really interested in maintaining the forum anymore. I gently sneaked out the back door, and thought I had now finally left all that magic stuff behind me.

Until... a few weeks ago, I sat at my computer and something reminded me of my old friend. I wondered what he was up to and, on a whim, typed his name into google. Unfortunately, what I found was his obituary. He had died a year before. I was in shock. He was the closest thing to a brother I had ever had. I felt compelled to contact his brother and give my condolences. I had heard he now worked for a newspaper and tried to find his work email. To access the paper online, I had to register. For some reason I remembered the j4 address, now dormant for two years, and used it to register for the newspaper. I found this:

hello,
are you going to come back to forum 4 mr g ?

mr x.

This was sent 3 days before I saw it. I would never have seen it.

[Mr X]

hello mr g,

i have to admit, some of the synchronicty talk in this thread and the other one has me going like this
.
it has given me something to think about, interested. sometimes im not sure what to say.

 i am hoping there is an part trio. if there is or isnt, i would like to know what you think of these synchronicity, and what effect they had on you, your thinking at the time and so on. what did it mean to you as it all happened (i am also curious what made you think of your friend, as that seems instrumental).

i cant remember why exactly i sent you that message at that time, but it would of had to do with what was happening on this forum at the time.

it has made me think of an extra category for synch - functional ones, meaning not required. such as some people might think synchs happen due to the universe giving them an message (intelligence behind it), some synchs have subjective meaning for the person experiencing them, but then there is an synch that results in something actually happening - not so much containing meaning but containing function (for whatever reason).

mr x.

[Mr G]

Well, I suppose we are creating part three as we go along.

My film selection for this fair Sunday morn was Joss Whedon's take on "Much Ado About Nothing", starring among others Mr Nathan Fillion as Dogberry. At about an hour and 20 minutes in I realised I wasn't really paying attention and paused it. If I can get this right, here is a screenshot of what was paused on my PC for several hours today.



I'll get back to your questions, but as to what it means, your guess is as good as mine.

Edit: I have now re-watched the film and can highly recommend it. Fillion just about steals the show, but Benedick and Beatrice are excellent too.

[Mr X]

it is funny little things like that, the gif and pause picture. i will be sure to watch that movie soon.

the meaning is definatley the wall the synch discussion is hitting.
say if for some reason i had to come up with a meaning for the synch that led you back here, it would be something like
"as you went to make a last gesture of respect for your friend, a parting gift from him was you being led to somewhere where you can talk about that stuff again and be yourself" (or any of the many variations of the same theme, just different words)
but adding meaning like that opens up so many can of worms.

i am happy in the other thread that tosk mentioned "whether meaning and information are the same thing". one thing this conversation has had me thinking, is that synchs seem to be ongoing, like more than one instance. more like a pattern or network of events, than an singular coincidence.

say a person (1) lost their wallet, and only realized they lost as they are line to pay for something. as they panic and look for their wallet somehow the person behind them (2) realizes the wallet they found earlier belongs to that person and saves the day. just an nice coincidence, out of the chaos of the universe things just randomly lined up.

if an month later 2 lost their wallet, and it was found and returned by 1, then it seems there is something going on, an synchronicity. and anyone on earth would think "what does this mean ?"
well it seems that way to me, meaning, no idea.

with meaning be an stalling point right now, it made me interesed in other factors (such as effect on person, effect on thinking/emotion). such i know in the past synchs have made me feel "hyped up" or given some sort of lift to my feeling.

i have also been reminded by this converstation, but dont quote me on this, even the ultra casta belifer theun mares, a very hardcore toltec guy who even had his own strict and elaborate cosmology, was of the "there is no meaning to anything aside from the meaning you give to anything". (not his words just off the top of my head, i just thought it was curious he went with that). i might try to find the quote if i can.

mr x.

[ju4o]

Great synchronicity!!  Your discretion is keenly calibrated.  But now I understand more what you meant on 17th March ("there is something funny going on here") ... at the time I wondered what you meant and had no idea.

This synchronicity is suffused with meaning, I think, and one thing it means is that I can send you email to a basically nonfunctional email address and it can take you 3 months to get it, while Mr X can send you email to the same address and it can take you 3 days.  I wonder how long it took the nigthingale.  Here is a timeline,



The green bars show posting at forum4.  The left hand blue bar is when I sent you email (Apr 2012) and the right hand one is when Mr X sent you email (three weeks ago).  These bars are automatically generated and are accurate to one second but some resolution is necessarily lost when they are scaled down for web viewing.

Also it's funny how you two never overlapped at this forum until now ~ one of you kept leaving just before the other appeared.  That's got to mean something.

[Mr X]

nice image mr j.

for the sake of information i want to add - i didnt send an message to mr g by email. forum4 did, i sent an pm to mr g and hoped for the best.

mr x.

[Mr G]

The plot thickens! Thanks for that, j4. I will make a more serious post trying to answer some of the questions that have come up, including the meaning of "meaning". That reminds me of Clinton:

That depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.

First, I need to get some more synchronicities out of my system, then you please tell me when I'm getting carried away. The main thing for me is that it certainly appears as if they are much more frequent when I post here.

Right, nightingale first. Then, severed hands.

But the big news this evening is......Nightingale!!

I wonder how long it took the nigthingale.

Some time before coming here again I became mildly obsessed with Shakespeare and what Merlin called a conspiracy theory. My interest waned slightly, but got lit again after the post about sonnet 127 I made elsewhere on this forum. I have been watching every Shakespeare film adaptation I can get my hands on, and yesterday it was Titus Andronicus' turn. In act 2, scene 3, Aaron speaks thusly:

Hark Tamora, the empress of my soul,
Which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee,
This is the day of doom for Bassianus:
His Philomel must lose her tongue to-day,
Thy sons make pillage of her chastity
And wash their hands in Bassianus' blood.

I added the italics, and for good reason. Philomela is the woman who is turned into a nightingale in Ovid's Metamorphoses. How would I possibly know this? Ovid's translator was Arthur Golding, the uncle of Edward de Vere, who stands accused of being the greatest writer of all time in disguise.

Cecil appears to have employed Golding as his nephew's receiver for several years, for two of his dedications are dated from Cecil House, and in 1567 he dated a dedication from Barwicke, one of the de Vere manors near White Colne, Essex. (wikipedia)

Lavinia, the nightingale figure in this play, has her tongue cut out (female nightingales are mute) and both her hands cut off. Later, Titus Andronicus himself has his hand severed by Aaron to appease Saturninus. In unrelated news: today, my lady friend tells a tale of when she was pranked by some roguish knave, and given a fake severed hand in a cake tin. She knew none of Titus Andronicus, or of my watching. Hours later I would watch the first episode of the new season of Game of Thrones, wherein Jaime Lannister is fitted with a fake to replace his severed hand.



On the left, Lavinia (the nightingale, whose brother slays the king). On the right, Jaime Lannister (the kingslayer, whose sister/lover bears the new king).

Now, me

I learned for a second time that "zounds" is a contraction of "God's wounds", like "Gadzooks" is a contraction of "God's hooks" (the nails from the cross)

Now, Aaron, act 4, scene 2 (upon receiving his son, the queen's bastard)

'Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue?
Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom, sure.

Now Shake-speare, quoted elsewhere on this forum

But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:

I think I should stop there, but then there's also "jupiters nuts sounds like an exclamation ron burgundy would say." He in fact said "By the beard of Zeus," who's the same god. I wrote Part Deux because I remembered it from the stupid Charlie Sheen movie, but it is also a homophone of "Par Dieu!", which means "By God!" and if you type de pardieu into google translate (French to English) you get "of Jove" which means "of Jupiter" and, my word... is that the time?

[ju4o]

Well I gotta say that maybe that is a bit rambly, but I think rambling can be good, it is what these forums can be good for.

When you gave that Shakespeare sonnet in another post, I thought that you translated it in a rather odd way.  But then I looked up what other people have said about it, and it seems that different experts interpret it in completely different ways.

By the way, I don't think by any means all synchronicities are suffused with meaning.  The meaningful ones tend to come in meteoric showers scintillating and hinting at half-seen connections as though a woven fabric of intent pervades everything.

Which is similar to what Mr X said just now about them being "ongoing".

But there are also isolated coincidences which are enough to raise an eyebrow but not deeply meaningful, I think just funny.

Here is an example.  Many years ago Aesop organized a forum for about 5 posters and I think no one else even knew about it.  It was very interesting and great fun but at one point I decided that the forum could do with a little bit of mystery, that a frisson of uncertainty would contribute to the conversation.  Therefore I registered a new posting identity with the purpose of adding mystery and uncertainty to the forum.  Can you guess what posting name I chose?

The name I chose was "Customer X".

[Mr G]

Yep, sorry about that. It's now out of my system.

Let me just make sure of something, and forgive me if anyone is offended. You and Mr X are not the same person, are you?

[ju4o]

No!  And I hope Mr X says the same ... otherwise we will be in a real pickle.

[Mr X]

No!  And I hope Mr X says the same ... otherwise we will be in a real pickle.

mr x.

ps. i like to read rambles, sometimes a good ramble is the only way get some thoughts on the table (especially with this synch talk, as one event can link to many other factors, often personal, and always detail heavy, how else is there to describe it aside from lots of information presented at once). there is no need for being sorry or embarrassed about anything.

[Mr X]

by the way mr g, after i last posted i got on with my thursday night viewing, and within seconds saw this


just posting as thought it was worth a laugh.

mr x.