Synchronicity

I've always been a firm believer in the idea of synchronicty or serendipity having an enormous influence/impact on our lives. In the past, I've experienced many things that one would normally chalk up to coincidence or chance, but with such alarming frequency that I have had to put some faith in an overarching, guiding force in the universe.

Now, before you think I'm waxing all philisophical on you, one area where I tend to experience this phenomenon is in my entertainment - comics, TV, movies and music - and today was a perfect example of this.

Case in point. The other day, I picked up Gilbert Hernandez' Palomar from the library. I've been watching Los Bros. Hernandez from the sidelines for years, but had yet to truly get my feet wet with their body of work. While I'm in the middle of reading it, I stumble upon the first Fantagraphics collection of Love & Rockets at a local bookstore. I don't remember ever seeing it there before, nor at such an affordable price ($6.99 CAN), so I can only chalk it up to serendipity that it was, quite literally, dropped into my lap as it was.

Another example of this would be the latest DVD I bought this week, Christopher Nolan's remake of Insomnia from a few years back. You know the one starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank? Anyway, I picked it up for a steal of a price (I'm just a sucker for those can't miss 'em deals) and was remembering, as I purchased the disc, the Criterion Collection release of the Norwegian version and the last time I saw it sitting on a shelf at a Rogers Video thinking, 'maybe I should pick that up sometime'. Flash forward to the very next day and a trip to the library downtown and guess what I find? That's right, the Norwegian version of Insomnia just sitting there on the shelf almost like it was waiting there for me.

And just in case you think I'm stretching it a bit, bear in mind that I was at a different library earlier in the day but they didn't have any interesting DVDs to take out so we went to this other one later on.

To a lesser degree, there was also an instance today where I was finishing up Nick Hornby's About a Boy and talking about the movie adaptation with my wife (making specific comments about the Weitz brothers who made the flick) only to find myself stumbling upon a short Weitz brothers interview while at the bookstore today.

I mean, come on.

There are a number of other times that I could go into to cement my argument, but I think you're starting to see the picture that is forming here.

I don't know if everybody experiences these sorts of events or if it's just me but I do know that I have a lot of days like this (sometimes involving mysterious cheques arriving in the mail) and I can't help but think that there's probably some ineffable universal design at work. Granted, that could be bad news for people like my mother-in-law (she's always getting short-changed when she goes shopping), or my kooky neighbour (people keep stealing her stuff but leaving our house alone) who, more often than not, can't seem to catch a break. Still, I'm pretty confident that there has to be some checks and balances in place, so they're probably getting breaks and I just don't know about it.

Knock wood, I guess.

On a somewhat unrelated note, now that I have all this Hernandez Bros. work lying around the house, I'm reminded of the fact that Eric Reynolds (of Fantagraphics Books) gave me Xaime and Gilbert's phone numbers some time ago for an interview which never got off the ground due to my not using them and calling them up (something for which I am still kind of kicking myself over). Maybe I'll have to remedy that sometime soon. Could be a fun interview. Could be the interview to start the ball rolling again. I dunno. I'm just thinking out loud as usual.

mike