I definitely invited the land of crazy to stick around when I suspended disbelief at all the synchronicities and serendipitous events occurring in my life, so many and with such frequency, that I began to question the nature of reality.
My pal, Jennifer's dad, Ed Holmes--the genius behind St. Stupids Day and the SF Mime Troupe, had noticed this quality in his life and coined the term serentypical. The magickal intersects and weaves its way into one's life with such regularity, that it is no longer unusual to have the magickal happen, its almost ordinary or expected.
Welcome to the Craig side of the Mirror, Alice.
I started noticing the archetypal energies in my life. As I lived up to the idea of the most obvious, Hermes the messenger, I started to notice others equally at play in my life. Chiron, the wounded healer. The Trickster/Mirror- who teaches lessons people don't want to learn. The Catalyst--Change Agent. As The Journeyman who goes through the darkness of the underworld , bringing a message of light to the other side.
But perhaps the most profound is that of the Phoenix. Life has given me the great good fortune/bitter pill of constantly having to reinvent myself. Life has provided a constantly changing landscape of dissolving jobs and tenuous living situations which has made the ability to arise from the ashes of my former life, and to take wing as a new version of the Me monster.
On a deeper take on the version of the Phoenix, I started to feel a very real and strong tie to my brother, Bruce, who died in a fire a year before I was born. We share a middle name, and I felt like maybe we shared a spirit in the Here Now.
On Day Six of AIDS/LifeCycle 10, this year, I took a nod from my friend, Mariano Puente, and dedicated it Bruce, my little cherubic brother. I thought about him all day, and was deep in thought (though still present on the bike...) when I pulled into a Rest Stop at Santa Barbara's lovely coast.
As I parked my bike, I walked up to a guy near bike parking for some reason. I didn't need anything and it was going to be a quick piss and hop on over to the Paradise Pit for ice cream.
He turned around and said, "This is from your brother Bruce for you." He pinned me with a Bruce button. Obviously shaken, I said, "Wow, I was just thinking about my brother, Bruce, who died before I was born..."
He looked quizzical and shaken, too. "I don't know why I said that, but it is from your brother Bruce, and he loves you..." and he hugged me and started to cry.
I dried my eyes, got back on my bike without peeing, and pedaled down the path toward ice cream, a strange and heady concoction of happy and sad, celebrating and grieving, melancholy and optimistic, about this innate great gift that I have been given, and was most grateful for Bruce sticking around to sharethis kayak with me in the Flow of Life.
