Today was a day of oscillating energy. I’ve been reading a lot about quantum physics lately, learning how qigong masters can target cancer cells thousands of miles away and destroy them, or how the bending of spoons in psychokinesis is done by heating up tiny clusters of molecules with the mind in a way that scientists don’t know how to replicate. Studying energy is like studying consciousness. I believe they’re one and the same; and so when I say it was a day of odd energy, a day that was “Tucson strange,” as the clerk at the Natural Grocers cash register called it, I also mean that I was both bringing in, and giving out, that energy—not good nor bad, not odd or normal, but, perhaps, full. The following account is all a true story.

“Coincidence Documentation: Feb. 17”

I wore a pair of earrings to lunch with my mom and her friend. I have dozens of earrings. Why this pair? They called me. At lunch, my mom gave a gift to her friend and what did she give her?  Earrings made by the exact same designer! Coincidence, or intention?

I then went from lunch up to the mountains for a sola hike. The day was Tucson perfect, 72 degrees and asking to be explored. As I walked, I pretended the grass that’s growing on either side of the trail was hair–scratchy green and golden, mottled hair. And I scratched it, in the air, as if I were scratching the top of a dog’s head, that sweet spot behind the ears. I figured if the grass is seen as the hair of Mother Earth, and most folks I know like getting their scalp scratched and tickled, then she probably would as well. This is also a practice I’ve been cultivating from my Reiki training, to feel the energy of plants as I walk by.

So, I was doing that, scratching the air and imagining it to be Earth’s hair, when I saw the rounded belly of an older man protruding through the brush. His belly came first. It was covered in white cotton, and the image instantly brought me to a memory of my Grandpa, one of the originals of giant bellies held in place by suspenders and decorated at the throat with a turquoise bolo. My Grandpa and my Grandma, both of whom lived here for decades, both of whom died here and are buried here. While thinking about them, I started to talk to them in my mind, asking them how they were, wondering what they would think of me walking around the desert. Wondering, even more so, what they would think of my life thus far. Jokingly, I asked them to show they were there. I was imagining a mountain lion coming out, or a hare, or the shiver of a snake.

I rounded the corner and arrived smack into a swarm of bees. I have never been so close to a buzzing hive. Dozens and dozens of bees were flying toward it from all over. I moved through quickly, as if in a trance, and none of them stung me. Walking away, I could hear their buzzing, the busy agenda of their Monday, as they protected their home. It was only after that, thinking of home, that I stopped still on the trail. I had just been asking for a sign my grandparents’ energy and there, bam, was a hive of bees! Instantly, I concluded the bees must have been Grandma. She was her own busy bee, swooping around the kitchen, buzzing about, murmuring with her friends, humming stories. I felt this wave of closeness, tenderness, to the bees. My thoughts then drifted to Grandpa; if Grandma was a hive of bees, what would he be? Even though we called him Papa Bear, he did not seem to embody the full strength of a black bear walking in the woods. It seemed he would appear gentler.  

Walking on for a few minutes, I met another hiker. Seeing me alone, he decided to “be funny” and cautions, “Watch out young lady! There’s a bear over there!” “Really?!” My response, instantaneous, is trained to be hyper curious about bears. I have often found and been found by them while hiking. Of course, there are no bears in Pima Canyon, and so he, apparently baffled by my excitement at seeing such a creature, adds on, “Well, it was just a small one.” A small bear. My Grandpa! Ok, given, there wasn’t actually a bear. But the very mention of a small bear introduced its presence onto the trail and it felt like confirmation, almost as much as the buzzing hive of bees, that my Grandpa’s spirit was strolling beside me.

Fast forward an hour. I was walking back and getting thirsty. About to stop for water so I could hydrate before my tongue became the consistency of a cat’s, I decided to go just a little bit further than the tree shade I had initially designated for my break. I rounded the corner and saw an older woman, one I had seen earlier also hiking alone, fall right in front of me! She had been trying to cross the stones over the creek. I ran up to her and helped her up. She was fine, but a little unnerved. We ended up walking and talking together for a few minutes. I told her something that she said really helped her put something in her own life in perspective. It felt like we were meant to share space with one another. Lovingly, she then ushered me forward, assuring me she was fine, and as I walk-ran away, I realized that if I had stopped at that first water place, I would not have been there with her as she fell. She would have been alone and shaken, as happens when anyone tumbles in the wilderness.

Leaving Magic Mountain

After all of these small or not so small moments, I leave the magic mountain in a haze of feel-goods. My mood is one of interstellar elation. I arrive home and tell my roommate Sean I believe I am in an alternate dimension. He nods his head. After snacking, still full of energy, I decide I will finally go to try and play pick up soccer at a park that a new friend had invited me to weeks ago. As I get in my car and drive to that side of town, my whole body is charged with possibility. Even though my hip is hurting a bit from the hike, I figure it’ll be fine–I’m ready to run. I’m listening to Lizzo on repeat.

Almost at the park on the south side of town, I see a man on the corner with a sign asking for help. At the last minute, I find a bag of nuts and pass them his way. After saying thanks, he slides into conversation as we wait for the light to turn, starting with “Dang. You are beautiful!” Surprisingly, it didn’t feel creepy, and it didn’t irritate me as much as a comment like this sometimes can. Instead, it felt like it was said by a grandparent. I told him he was too, and he posed, then yelled back to the woman he was with that he was going to run off with me. While the whole interaction, spanning twenty-five seconds, certainly had patriarchal tones that I usually don’t condone, in that moment, it felt like a boost of beauty for both of us, and helped me feel more confident about showing up at a park, all on my powerful lonesome, to meet someone and play soccer (which I haven’t played in years).

I find the park, find the parking lot, and BAM! There is nobody on the soccer field. I am confused. Also, early, so I decide to wait by a couple folks at a picnic table. I learn they, too, are living in homelessness, and they’re from Tucson. Have been here since 1975. I learn their names, and the man confirms that every Monday at 5pm those crazy soccer players are there but, oddly, they are not today. It is a holiday, I suppose aloud, and so I decide soccer is not meant to be. Driving away, I head the route through downtown and find it winds right in front of a yoga studio I love. I park, just to see if there’s a class. I have no mat but do have one random pair of pants in my car. And what do you know? There’s a class starting in 10 minutes.

The teacher, new to me, said she wanted to craft a class based on need and in the moment. Does anyone have any needs? My hip is still tweaked, asking for love and affection, and so I voice the pain. Got it, the teacher confirms, and we all spend the next hour and fifteen minutes in deep hip-opening, body healing stretching. It felt like all that power I’d been building up from the hike onwards, that alternative reality that was bubbling up in me, overflowed and was reinvested in myself. Rather than running in a game that may have hurt my already sore hip, I ended up tending to my pain instead. Chance? Coincidence? Or something more?

Also, a friend I was thinking about today because I saw someone who looked like her on the trail texted me. Just to add another small piece of evidence.  

Conclusion: Truth or Fiction?

Moment of reckoning. Was it, indeed, a strange Tucson day? The more I have traveled, externally and internally, the more I see evidence for psychic abilities, for communication and interaction between our consciousness and the world around us. I don’t believe these moments are coincidences! Friends texting when we think of them; finding money when we need a dollar; ending up somewhere we didn’t know we needed to be; thinking of a loved one and having something remind us of them instantly.

This concept is obviously not new. It’s been studied and incorporated as part of Chinese and other eastern medicines for millennia; it’s just western mindsets, both health and science related, that seem to need evidence in a particular way. But I am not an official scientist, and I enjoy a good talk with a psychic. A medium I sat with once told me that when I was in a place where my vibrational energy was charged and aligned, I would send out waves of those vibrations into the world and bring the people to me who were supposed to arrive. Truly, I used to think she meant a physical place. I found that sense of unity to be the case in Costa Rica, in Ecuador, in India. But the realization hit not too long ago that the place she meant was already here—it was my own internal landscape!

This may seem obvious to you, but for me, this was such an Ah-ha! And since I’ve been in Tucson, I’ve been practicing that aligning a lot more. I’m writing every day and practicing yoga, exercising and eating food that doesn’t make my stomach angry, giving up caffeine and waking early, surrounding myself with people who fill me up. I find my own energy doubling, even tripling, and these “coincidences” seem to be happening all the more, or maybe my eyes are just more open. That’s why I am documenting them today. Because I want to remind myself, and everyone else, that there is something bigger, energetically, that is happening in us, around us, all the time.

Anyone Want Some Extra Love?

Also, with so much of these feel goods lately, I’ve been wanting to share the love. This is also the perk of underemployment—the small jobs I’m taking before my work starts in the summer leave me with some time to play. Thus, I have time, and you very well might have a need. What could it be? Need for connection? Intimacy? If so, send me a message and I will send you a… love letter! Do you need inspiration? Joy? Play? Let me know and you just might get your very own rhyming poem. Might you need balance, harmony, nature? A haiku could come to you.

Seriously. Send me a direct message on FB or email or wherever and let me know what you need, and I would be honored to channel some of these creative juices into something for you. Next time you experience a “coincidence,” pause there. What might you be manifesting?