I am a Kentucky boy, born and raised, but now live in New York City. This is on account of meeting in Kentucky a young actress from New York who captures my heart and drags it back to her home state with myself attached.
Down the hill from where this actress and I settle in Manhattan is a commercial establishment which—when we first move to the neighborhood—is a “bodega.” A bodega—as I understand New York lingo for such a thing—is “a store that sells mostly goods necessary to daily life such as beer and cigarettes and lotto tickets.” This particular bodega of which I speak also sells milk, and this milk often exits its carton or jug in liquid clumps. And the bread sold here often exhibits green splotches of such woeful aspect even a New York Jets fan will shun it. And a New York Jets fan is accustomed to all manner of woeful green aspects.
This business and its resident cat (most bodegas come furnished with such) soon clumps and splotches itself out of existence. But from its milk-soured soil sprouts a delightful cafe and bar, which keeps itself in business by selling me beer out of a tap during happy hour.
I, however—despite what you may hear—am not this establishment’s only drinker, and after a short time this cafe and bar becomes a popular social spot, and especially so on Friday nights. Of loud music there is none, though gifted patrons may display their chops on an upright piano in the corner. As a result, conversation is audible between conversationalists—which is rare for social spots in this city—and often likewise audible to non-conversationalists nearby, which is where this story truly starts.
On a Friday night I am seated at the bar and overhear comments made by a lady to my right (who is conversing with another woman on her right) to the effect that she is a painter, and not only a painter but a “landscape painter.” My inner ear elbows my curiosity in the ribs with this information, and when I detect a lull in her conversation, I speak to this lady.
“What makes you decide to paint landscapes?” I ask. I am genuinely interested to know the answer, as I do not paint, and mostly I do not paint landscapes. I am intrigued to know what would possess a person to pursue this activity to the point of continually repeating it. She answers by the way of this and that while continuing her original conversation in the opposite direction. And while so doing she produces and places in front of me her “business card,” which features a thumbnail-sized example of her work.
Of all the landscapes I ever see, the painting on this card is most emphatically one. It features land and sky and trees and a meandering stream, the location of which could be “anywhere in the world.”
My curiosity—far from satisfied with the “this”s and “that”s this painter has thus far furnished by way of answering my questions—is further piqued. And when I detect another pause in her conversation, I hold up the business card and ask, “So what is it that makes you decide to stop at this particular spot and paint a picture of—”
And here I pause only a moment as I reach a tendril of thought up into my recollection for the name of a stream to insert as a “f’r instance.”
I find one, and finish with “…and paint a picture of…say…Elkhorn Creek?”
She begins answering, and now her answer seems more thoughtful but also distracted as she flips the card front to back and back to front. She pauses and gives the card a tiny shake. “The title of the painting is nowhere on the card. How did you know this is Elkhorn Creek?”
I fall off my stool. And by “fall off my stool” I mean “sit there gobsmacked, astonished, and several other words conveying the same thing.” I have plucked Elkhorn Creek out of my recollection as it is a waterway in Georgetown, which is my hometown in Kentucky. In fact, the school bus I ride every day to Scott County High School (at least until I am old enough to drive) rumbles twice a day over a tiny bridge spanning Elkhorn Creek.
She falls off her stool in a similar way and we launch into an investigation of this coincidence.
Let me take this opportunity to head off the reader at the proverbial pass and say, “No, my subconscious does not somehow plunge back forty years into my pool of recollection and ‘recognize’ this small bend of a waterway as Elkhorn Creek. The painting cannot look like Elkhorn Creek to me, as the only part of Elkhorn Creek I ever see is the bit by the bridge. The chance that I say ‘Elkhorn Creek,’ and also that this lady has a painting of Elkhorn Creek on her business card, has the same likelihood as does a pint of Guinness to cluck like a chicken.”
And yet the Guinness clucks.
As it turns out, this lady—having one way and another come into some dollars—arranges to spend three years in Kentucky where she lives in a barn—which instead of hay, straw, tools, and ungulates, is outfitted with a living space made comfortable for a female U.S. consumer—and paints landscapes.
But her only arrangements are not merely to do this painting in my home county (Scott) and my hometown (Georgetown). No, no, those arrangements are not sufficient for her. She will not be content until—YEARS LATER—she arranges to choose 1) that specific stool in 2) that specific cafe/bar in 3) that specific neighborhood of 4) that prodigiously populated city of 9 million souls, 5) next to me. And she arranges to be 6) speaking of this landscape painting she does, in 7) a voice with enough breath support to be overheard, in 8) a social space, the quietude of which is a bit rare in this many-souled city, 9) between the hours of 5 pm and 6 pm, 10) on the same day I—from the same county and town as the painting she has chosen as sufficiently emblematic of her talent to include it on her business card—choose to sit on the stool adjacent.
When such stories (which are not so uncommon as one might suppose) have been told by myself or others, my “go-to” comment has ever been “synchronicity unleashed.”
But the older I grow, the more I decide maybe this synchronicity is not so much “unleashed” (as if it is customarily leashed, but has somehow got loose just this once). No, I tend more and more to think synchronicity—especially in this big city—is more like pigeons: it is everywhere and it is all the time, but it is at the same time so common as to be completely unnoticed.
And from there it is only a short putt to conclude that coincidences—like pigeons in the city—are there the whole time—perfectly happy to not be noticed, but easy to find if you do but converse on topics other than weather, work, or politics. Or happen to overhear.
[Painting: “Scene on Elkhorn Creek” by Paul Sawyier, 1865-1917]
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