I am catching an early flight on Thursday to keep my date as Death in Madison, Wisconsin, where I am leading a weekend workshop titled "Making Death Your Ally." I pause for a cup of coffee at the cafe near the A gates at my local airport. The old guy behind the counter has been working there forever, and always seemd happy to see me. But today he freezes before greeting me. "They're calling my dad" he explains, referring to an airport announcement I missed. "Steven Noble. That's my dad's name. Of course, he's dead."
"Maybe your dad is being called to a better place," I suggest as he works the coffee urn.
The announcement is repeated. "Passenger Steven Noble, please return to the security check."
"Or maybe your dad left something behind," I amend my suggestion.
"Maybe what he left behind was ME," says the guy behind the counter, thoughtfully, as he hands me my coffee.
On the first leg of my trip, I open a selection of William James's writings, acquired the day before, to an introductory chapter titled, "A Conversational Encounter with William James." The young woman in the seat naext to me gapes at the page, wide-eyed.
"That's my dad's name," she tells me. "William James." Another rhyming theme for the day is asserting itself; the first two people I encounter on the road recognize their fathers' names.
Changing planes at Chicago's O'Hare airport, I go to use a rest room on the F concourse. The scene inside the men's room is rather strange. Men are standing about motionless, all watching the maneuvers of a maintenance man who is down on the floor on his back, wriggling his large body so as to get his head and torso under the locked door of a stall. He sputters with shock or disgust as he gets far enough to unlock the door from the inside. Another janitor moves to block our view of whatever is inside the stall. After a muffled conference, one of them takes off in a hurry, pulling out a walkie-talkie. "Is there a problem?" I ask as he hurried by. "No problem," he responds, with a trace of dry humor. I don't need to ask anything more, because I get it. Death stopped by that rest room just before I did.
Now I'm on my second flight of the day, on the little puddle-jumper that will take me from Chicago to Madison. There's a hold-up. A woman airline staffer with a manifest explains, "We have an extra body on board." It seems there is one more passenger on the plane than is identified on her chart. She goes through the plane row by row, asking all of us for our names and our boarding passes. I notice that the woman across the aisle from me is readiing a mystery novel with a bookmark that says "Booked for Murder". The man next to me gives his name, when asked, as "Flatland." I turn to him and observe, "That's an unusal name." He explains that his family took the name from the district in Norway from which they emigrated. I tell him about the parable of Flatland devised by Edward Abbott to help us imagine what it would be like to see and operate from the fifth dimension instead of merely the 3D reality (plus time) we ordinarily inhabit. Abbott's Flatland is a 2D world in which everything is completely exposed to a citizen of 3D reality who can materialize and dematerialze and move things around in a godlike (or ET) fashion incomprehensible to inhabitats of the horizontal universe.
In the midst of this conversation, the mystery of the extra body is resolved. An infant has been assigned a seat in the manifest, though not a boarding pass. We are airborne, soon looking down on the dairy farms of Wisconsin cheese country.
At Madison's Dane County Airport, my friend Karen McKean, who is coordinating my Death workshop for me, is waiting next to a display case that features a curious composite sculpture with a skeletal figure with a Death's head at its center.
Death hasn't finished rhyming. When I arrive at the CBS studios for an interview with "Live at Five" I am given coffee in a black mug with the logo of a (Winnipeg) taxidermy company, "a family tradition." When I go on from the interview to have drinks with a friend before a bookstore event, she tells me she just dreamed her husband died, or a heart attack.
I've declared (in "The Three 'Only' Things) that "life rhymes." I've been reminded that Death rhymes too.
The photo of the Death sculpture at Dane County Airport is by Karen McKean, who leads Active Dreaming classes at her studio near Madison WI in addition to coordinating my area workshops.
10 comments:
Wow! What a synchronistically packed journey!
I'm reminded of the spotting of a raven-like crow ominously perched over doorway 326...March 26. As it turned out, death did tip its hat several times that day.
There's a personal rhyming for me in these events happening on 3/26 as that is the anniversary of my own mother's death.
A novel I found fascinating on the theme of facing and surviving one's own death and the subsequent responsibility and empowerment, is Jeri Smith Ready's, Eyes of the Crow.
Robert, I sure hope you relay what happens in that workshop.
When I was flying in to Denver on March 4th hoping to get there before my father died, I was sitting in a coffee shop going over what I had in my heart to say to him before he crossed over. I had lots of conflicting feelings....a song that I had never heard before was playing overhead ....the words went like this, "say what you've got to say, say what you've got to say, even if your heart is breaking, even when the door is closing, say what you've got to say"....
Well, I just couldn't believe it. But that song was such a help to me at that time. It was the Universe saying. "It's ok, just say what is in your heart"...
Just so wonderful to feel loved like that!
Hi Robert,
Just before I read your blog I watched, teary-eyed, a bit of the service for the four fallen Oakland Police officers, broadcast "live" today.
Thanks for the reminder of a deeper layer beyond...
When repeated rhymings occur that seem clearly related to an upcoming event, might they sometimes lend a power to or suggest a heightened significance embedded in that event? Is it a call to pay special attention? Is it the Universe playing with us like a gentle breeze? Is it all of the above? Oh, what a mystery we move in!
On Friday evening, just prior to giving a talk on dreaming in the history of religions at Unity Church in Madison, I wondered whether I should open with the narrative I gave in this blog post as an example of how the powers of the deeper world speak through the symbols and anomalies of everyday life. In the parking lot, I picked up a pencil with the inscription, "Happy Halloween". So of course I started my lecture with my account of how Death rhymed on the trip to Madison.
Beyond the specific messages we can derive from signs and symbolic pop-ups in the world around us, we can sometimes derive a sense of the deeper logic of events and clues to the multidimensional matrix within which our 3D reality floats.
The shooting at the nursing home in NC was very sad but I could not help but notice the rhyming names of 3 of the victims - Tessie, Jessie and Bessie.
Your experiences remind me of a ghost ride I took at Disneyland many years ago. There were two of us seated in the car. At the end of the ride was a mirror in which we saw an "extra one" in the car with us--a grinning ghost sitting between us with its arms around us. I don't know how the trick worked, but I've never forgotten the image.
I love all the rhyming on your trip. Hey--if life rhymes and death rhymes, then life and death must rhyme too. Le grand Villanelle!
I would like to report that in the 'Making Death Your Ally' workshop last weekend we did a conscious journey to our own deaths which included a life review. During the journey a huge buzzard that I hadn't seen on the property before swooped down within 20 feet of The Dream Studio and circled before, during and after exercise. This work never ceases to amaze me! It is truly magic
Karen,
Thanks for sharing that. I'm not surprised at all what happens during Robert's workshops!
Robert, I hope you do another workshop like that out Washington State way sometime.
Blessings on your path.
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