coincidences from the past three weeks:

1. @ a coffee shop in Austin--I borrowed a lighter from the man who was sitting next to me on the porch and we started to have a conversation. Among other things, he told me he is a carpenter who lives between Austin and Marin County. He had returned to Austin recently after building a barn for some folks in California's wine country. His cell phone interrupted us. He answered it, spoke briefly to his friend on the other end, then hung up and told me that I should go see his friend's band play that night at Flipnotics, another local coffee shop (I had told him that I hadn't listened to much live music over the summer; it just wasn't my focus. Sacrilege in Austin). The phone call had been from a friend who hadn't contacted him in over four months. Friend's name is Sick; he plays guitar for a band called Sicks Pack. I heard Sicks Pack for the first time two years ago, at a small, hideaway bar in Austin. I was there by chance. A friend had been invited by a boy she barely knew and she asked me to come along. I didn't enjoy the bar, but I was blown away by the band (wild bluegrass, great performers). I followed them for a while, then forgot about them a year later.

On that night two years ago, after the band had finished, Shaym called me, for Luis, against Luis' wishes. I went over to their house, Luis and I met, discovered that we had many strange, seemingly significant things in common, and prescribed our meeting to fate (I did, at least, with more conviction). Over the next two days, I kept telling the story of the strand of precise, random events that led to our meeting.

After the man at the coffee shop told about Sicks Pack's upcoming show, another young man came out of the coffee shop and asked my friend for a lighter. He asked me to name my favorite chapter of Ulysses, the book I was reading for a summer class on Joyce. He had taken the same class with the same professor two years ago.

2. Sleeping in the same bed as Adrienne, having the same dreams.

3. I wrote a short story after an uncomfortable interaction with an old acquaintance. This was the first piece of fiction I've tried to write in many months, and it ended up being at least partially truthful. Anyway, how could my emotions transcribe themselves into something more tangible?!--I had no idea what I was feeling, so I wrote about different things that I ended up relating to each other in certain ways. The great motif was bones. The next day I went to the first session for the writing class: organic form and hybridity. In her introduction to the class, the professor coincidentally referenced many of the things I had written about, the most surprising being a dead rabbit and Alice in Wonderland.

Before I wrote the story--a day or so before--Adrienne had shown me some drawings by Arthur Rackham, an artist whose name I hadn't known. When I told her about the intersections between my short story and my professor's lecture, she confessed that she'd just discovered a series of drawings (paintings?) Rackham made for an edition of Alice in Wonderland! Crazy...

4. Everything is Illuminated:

A boss at a former job played Devotchka constantly at work. I was disconnected from the band until this summer's road trip to Walla Walla, when Adrienne and I heard "How It Ends" on one of Michael's mixes. "How It Ends" was my favorite song by the band (maybe their most commercial? not sure), and I was so surprised to hear it--I think it came on somewhere in the middle of Arizona. Adrienne became a fan of the band and started listening to them regularly after we settled our things in Walla Walla. At some point during the past week, maybe during Alex's visit, someone mentioned the book, "Everything Is Illuminated." Maybe it was the writer's other book--Or, actually, Adrienne mentioned the book because she had recently watched the movie version of "Everything is Illuminated." After the movie, she watched a trailer for the movie, which used Devotchka's music. Later in the week Matthew sent me a text message from Austin asking if I thought he should read "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." This, completely out of the blue; I don't think I've ever expressed interest in Jonathan Safran Foer or his writing...