This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004). This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004). This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004

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Synchronicity Rocks

5:52 PM Thursday, June 2, 2005

[Jung, Schmung]

No sooner had I posted a Coffeeblog thing about synchronicity, that self-same Jungian phenomenon began to burst all over the place like popcorn. The focus in this case seems to be Japan. Having previously posted a Coffeeblog item about Keisuke, my Japanese college friend, I introduced a Zen element to this blog. What I didn't mention was that Keisuke had taken me to Kyoto, the former capital, on a whirlwind tour--get this!--with Japanese tourists, conducted entirely in the Japanese language, which I cannot understand. Having eliminated the possibility of intellectually processing the guide's lecture, Keisuke left me free to experience the tour, and the cultural icons that we tourists observed, fully in the moment.

Fast forward to last weekend. While at the beach my friend Babz spotted a funky pink plastic box of rocks, and thinking it cool, I took a cameraphone shot of it.

Now note my use of the terms "funky" and "cool." As it turns out, the Japanese have another term for a certain kind of aesthetic framework: wabi sabi. It does not mean either funky or cool, but those are the terms that an amerika-jin like me might deploy upon observing a wabi sabi phenomenon. As I now realize, I am a wabi sabi kind of guy and have been for ages, perhaps initiated in some way by Keisuke's tour of Kyoto.

I uploaded my pink box of rocks to Flickr, which is definitely cool if not funky, and soon thereafter found that there is a photo pool group, by invitation only, for wabi sabi. I submitted my pink box of rocks photo with a request to join the group, and once again synchronicity kicked in. The group administrator, who is based in the UK, had just posted a request for a wabi sabi object made of plastic. Bam! My pink box of rocks and I were accepted into the wabi sabi group.

And then, within hours, Bam! synchronicity struck again. My Technorati watchlist informed me that a Japanese website had just linked to the Coffeeblog. The site, one of several gorgeous photoblog sites operated by Nathan Duckworth, described this Coffeeblog as "A blog all about coffee. Well, mainly about coffee…" Ya like wabi sabi? Check out Nathan's sites. As far as I know, Nathan has not seen my Flickr box of rocks, so the coincidence was pure uncut mainline synchronicity.

And what would Keisuke have said about all of this synchronicity? I think I know. He would have said, "It is of no importance." And, hey, that's wabi sabi too. Like a box of rocks. Dumb? It is of no importance.

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