Josephine Baker hiding behind crossed eyes, a favourite pose of hers.

Merriam-Webster defines “synchronicity”as “the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality—used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung.” Seems simple enough, but there are whole web sites are dedicated to making it complicated, like “Understanding Synchronicity.” Then there are others that profess to make synchronicity to understand, but only complicate it all up. A perfect example is this interesting essay as Dr. Eric Weiss who jots down “Some Reflections on The Definition of Synchronicity,” which spins the Merriam-Webster definition into 3,553 words that makes my head hurt:

We cannot define synchronicity in terms of any one conventional
discipline. It certainly doesn’t belong in physics as that discipline
is normally understood. Nor does it really belong in the sphere of
general academic psychology.

There is no academic discipline for which synchronicity is an object
of concern. Not only is synchronicity outside the boundaries of any
particular conventional academic discipline, it is actually outside of
the entire meta-structure of academic disciplines that contains both
physics and psychology as we usually understand those terms.

More generally, we might say that synchronicity is a concept that has
no place within the modern view of the world. It is a concept that is
relevant to the modern world, that was developed in response to the
needs of the modern world, and that is of interest to people who have
been educated in the modern world. But it comes into the modern world
almost as a koan, as a kind of indigestible pill. If we are going to
digest it, we need to define it, but we can’t define it in modern terms.
What are we to do?

I know what I do when faced with extreme waves of synchronicity: I remember that we are all governed by the immutable, invisible, odourless, colourless laws of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. That’s when I begin look for the deeper meaning which exists beneath and within the unexplainable. There are no coincidences. All Hail His Noodly Appendages!!!

Since losing the nom de plume “Aunty Em Ericann” I have been awash in His Synchonatic Reflections™ and revel in the New Order of the Universe as it now aligns. Let me explain in a nutshell, without resorting to complicated theorem.

Think of your own personal synchronicity as a blanket you are shaking rhythmically up and down. The sine waves created by the blanket is a two dimensional representation of your synchronicity in a 3-Dimensional space. However, everyone knows that synchronicity works in the 6th Dimension, where it interacts with the ‘waving blankets’ belonging to everyone else. Where these waves collide are where the EXACT moments and locations the FSM has stitched together Space and Time and Gravity and Dimensionality and Predestination. If, as they contend in Quantuum Mechanics or String Theory or Whatever They’re Calling It These Days™, that all choices are possible in the Alternative Universes that exist, then the chances of anything so improbable can be proven possible by multiplying boiling water with pasta and adding sauce.

The 1st time I saw Sally Kellerman

Pastafarianism explains how and why Deborah Barry, The Happiness Coach, dropped back into my life unexplained a full 35 years after we first met. It also explains how and why I was to meet Sally Kellerman immediately following — dare I say it? — a spaghetti dinner 40 years ago, only to have her thrown back into my life recently in a way that proves that Noodly Appendages direct our every reality.

[I have reached out to Sally Kellerman and we’ll see whether she remembers that evening in Burlington, Ontario 45 years as fondly as I do. It all depends on how attuned she is to her own synchronicity.]

Add to all of this my latest and last bit of synchronicity: Over the past weekend a large group of us split off from the family festivities and wandered over to The Rust Belt Market at Woodward and 9 Mile in Ferndale, MI. After a while I had seen it all and wandered across the street by myself to a used bookstore on 9 Mile. It was a wonderful bookstore with every shelf jam-packed to the ceiling with books of every size and description. This is the type of place I could lose hours inside.

Not the actual shelf in the actual store, but an amazing recreation.

As I walked along the narrow entrance aisle created by all the bookshelves. To my right, at about the six foot mark, was a book pulled out at an odd angle. Every other book on the shelf was perfectly perpendicular save one, that drew my attention. The word Jazz was almost completely exposed and the copper-coloured cover was an usual hue. However, it still didn’t get my blanket shaking yet. However, as I reached up to straighten the book I pulled it out a little farther instead. Suddenly I was holding a book that I never knew existed and wanted to read immediately: “Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in her Time.”

I had only just, more or less, finished my little pocket biography of Josephine Baker, which had been highly praised by some of my friends. Baker’s life events were still rattling around in my head. Just that morning I had been telling my brother-in-law the high points of her life. Joe (my bro-in-law) had heard of the Stork Club incident, but didn’t realize it led to a life-long friendship with Grace Kelly. Then suddenly this book actually tried to jump off the shelf into my hand. Naturfally I bought it.

It seems like The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not quite done with me. I will go wherever He takes me.