synchronicity

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Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity for "meaningful coincidences," or acausal connection of two or more psycho-physic phenomena. Here is the most famous of the stories from his book Synchronicity:

"A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer, which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since."

Carl Jung Resources explains that Dr. Jung developed a treatment for this patient, ". . . this coincidence is not senseless, a simple coincidence. By using the amplification method, Jung associates in connection with the scarab and comes to the concept of death and rebirth from the esoteric philosophy of antiquity, a process that, in a symbolic way, the patient should experience for a renewal and vitalization of her unilateral personality, the cause of the neurosis she was suffering from."

Some are skeptical that coincidences are ever meaningful, and others are ecstatic when events seem to collide with sparks and intrigue. If they aren't meaningful, then so be it. If they are meaningful, what difference does it make?

When my brother Bennett died suddenly in 1996 at the age of 47 of severe arteriosclerosis (all four arteries were blocked), a series of events unfolded in the following weeks and months that could be mere coincidence, but for my family and me, were stunning occasions of conjunction. I want to tell them to you, and I am guessing you want to hear them. I know I have a human curiosity to hear stories that touch on magic and miracle, with a chink of light from beyond the veil of the unknown. The half dozen or so other occasions are eerie and chilling, but I'd like to share two of the quieter, less macabre and dramatic ones, to honor Bennett, who sometimes teased me while he laughed, "Ruthie, I just love how dramatic you are!" Moo, hee? (my mother's exclamation, for Who, me?)

One such moment was when we went to a high school play my nephew was in. The week before the play, a dozen of us were cleaning out my parents' house where Dad had passed away the year before and where Mom no longer lived, having moved to an assisted living home with Alzheimer's. At lunch we calculated that we were going to be one ticket shy of the number needed for our family members attending my nephew's play the following week. Bennett, who went by "Ben" with all his friends, said, I don't need a seat, I'll be video-taping it from the back of the auditorium anyway. That night, in my parents' empty home, Bennett died. Without a lick of furniture to lean on, we mourned and paced and lay on the rose-carpeted floor, in shock. The following weekend, as we sat in the high school auditorium waiting for my nephew's play to start, some sitting, some standing, we were chatting, and I leaned over the as yet unoccupied seat in front of me. I looked down at the dark green cracked leather, worn from decades of student assemblies, and there, scratched in the leather, was I ♥ Ben.

One other of many more such stories (which swell in their cumulative effect) is this. As the executor of my brother's estate, I made arrangements to sell the beautiful country acres he owned, where he had built a log garage and had just received all the materials to build a custom log home, by himself. He had laid out his gardens on grid paper, meticulous to a delicious fault. After Don and I left the property sale closing in September of 1996 with the new owners, and after we'd had a beer with them and raised our glasses to Ben, Don and I knew we had to drive out to the property one last time. It was the place where Don, our kids, Bennett and I had lain under the stars one March night, watching for a meteor shower that never materialized. Bennett was an avid amateur astronomer. I've told you before that he was also a brilliant amateur photographer, and his avatar was this grasshopper he shot somewhere. Don and I walked the property, peeked in the windows of the garage where his memorial service had been held on a very cold February day earlier that year, and we climbed back into the van to leave, windows down on that warm September evening. As Don inched along, both of us reluctant to leave, I happened to look down at the ground. Just at the edge of the tall grass by the drive, on one stalk of timothy grass, perched a lone grasshopper, swaying in the breeze. We stopped then, for a while longer. What are the chances of a grasshopper sitting on a blade of grass in the country on a September night? Probably astronomical. But maybe the chances of me looking right there, right then are a bit less.

What does it mean? I suppose it doesn't have to mean anything. But because we were heavy with shock and loss, all of our attention was riding close to the asphalt of what happened around us. We saw the connections, which felt as if they were more than the average, and more intense. But really, aren't we always connected to everything? If we were but to pay closer attention, and feel the wonder of the miracles in a blade of grass that stands up straight though it's as light as a feather, and bends when a breeze blows, not breaking, would we be amazed? And a grasshopper. Have you seen how far and how high a grasshopper can jump, and land on that exact stalk of grass that just happens to be in the perfect spot, and hold on? Is that not magic?

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Family (H)art

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Come in, come in, just follow the crowds (hehe). I hope you don’t mind if I indulge myself. I have created a gallery of visual art by members of my family. It’s my gift to me mostly, an acknowledgement of the love of growing up with Art as a recurring character in our family tree. It’s long, but you can be grateful that every single member of my family is not represented. In total we number 70 living souls, if I count correctly (math is not my strongest subject), but I am only including the visual artists, several of whom have passed on. I'm sharing 15 artists in all. I am defining visual art narrowly, as what you can hang on a wall (except for one exception, one of Lesley’s). Please click on the images if you’d like to see the details enlarged. I’ll start from oldest to youngest, except me. I’ll be last, but it doesn’t mean I’m saving the best for it. I’m just trying to be polite. Of course just look at pictures if you don't want to read all the information about the artists. I wouldn't blame you one bit, I know you're busy. This is documentation for my family and me as much as anything.

DISCLAIMER: I took photographs of many of these images, or the artists did, so there might be glare, or distortions. Blur your eyes when necessary.

Welcome, won’t you come in? Would you like an audio guide? They’re only $5. Or you can leave your photo ID. (I don’t really have an audio guide, I was just kidding.)

Corn, by Grandma Elizabeth

1 Grandma Elizabeth  b. 1870 d. 1957. My dad’s mother was 47 when Dad was born (and his dad, also a minister, was 70 when Dad was born and fought in the Civil War!), and I do not know if I met her. She died in Charlottesville, Virginia less than a year after I arrived. When my older siblings knew her, she was deaf and used an ear horn to hear. I know little else. Were we ever surprised when Dad was dying gently on a hospice bed in his dining room in 1995, and someone found this corn painting of Grandma’s in the attic. We had never seen nor heard of it, or that she was an artist. Lucky me, it’s hanging on the wall in our bedroom. (We don't have a formal dining room, where it would be more appropriate.) Sorry about the glare and distortion, I tried to photoshop it out and just couldn't get all of it.

2 Grandma Olive  b. 1891 d. 1960. I’ve posted about Grandma Olive, my mom’s mother, many times at this blog. I have no memory of her, she died when I was 3 or 4. After graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago, Olive was a professional artist/designer/illustrator in the 1920s and 30s. She designed clothes for Vogue and wallpaper for Thibaut. Her pen and ink drawings illustrated World Book encyclopedias and newspaper ads. You know that curious little sepia girl studying life from my sidebar? It’s one of hers, from a page in World Book, below. In this gallery I’ve also included a cabinet she painted that now lives in our family room. Mom said her mother used to go tromping on the streets of NYC looking for dilapidated bargains and would bring them home and doll them up. Below is also her cover illustration for the Bayonne Times (she resided in Bayonne, New Jersey) when the NY Holland Tunnel opened – the world’s first vehicular tunnel.

Illustration in World Book Encyclopedia, Grandma Olive

The "bastard" cabinet (so-called by an antiques dealer
who said it mixed many styles)
that Grandma Olive rescued and painted

Cover and detail in the Bayonne Times, on the event

of the opening of the Holland Tunnel, by Grandma Olive

3 Uncle Jimmie  b. 1906 d. 1994. My dad’s 10-year-older brother. The subject of a poem I posted. Uncle Jimmie had his own printing company, and he used to send us calendars at Christmas with prints from his carved woodblocks. Woodblock prints require a long, arduous and painstaking process, with a different block carved for each color, leaving the rest of the design uncarved and left for another block, then having to align everything perfectly.

Woodblock prints, by Uncle Jimmie 

4 Mom  b. 1916 d. 1997. Though my mom was a musical artist (pianist, choir director and composer), not so much a visual one, I’m including sheet music from an operetta she wrote based on Alice in Wonderland, which I only just learned about from my niece Shari, herself a splendid pianist, who inherited her grandma's handwritten sheet music. It has Mom's maiden name on it, but I have no idea when she wrote it. I think the flourishes of musical note flags are lyrically and visually beautiful. I sat by my mom on the piano bench as a toddler while she composed, watching her play a phrase, then transcribe the notes onto staff paper, painstakingly, one phrase at a time. Eventually I started pounding out melodies after hearing them repeated so often, surprising everyone. Too bad I didn't turn into a prodigy.

My mom's composition of the operetta, Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, never published

5 Dad  b. 1917 d. 1995. The image of him at right is the day he pronounced Don and me Husband & Wife. In his early days as a minister, my father supplemented his income with signs he painted. He was a fine pen and ink artist as well and created his own bookplate, below. Engravers duplicated the image on his and Mom's gravestone. Hart was his name, but it was also an animal (another word for deer) in a beautiful Psalm verse that represented his heart for God: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, oh God.  ~ Psalm 42:1.

Dad's pen and ink bookplate.

Mom and Dad's grave stone, with Dad's art work
(that's the headstone of my childhood Dr. Garlock behind)

6 Boots, aka Ginnie  My sister.

I grew up watching Bootsie draw. She drew this girl very early, in high school I think. Now she uses Soul Girl as her avatar at In Soul, her blog, after I suggested it, since it so perfectly represents her spirit. She is also an inspired photographer, and I am including a photo of windmills, one of her favorite symbols. She lives near Amsterdam with her wife Astrid, where they are legally married. (When oh when will we catch up in the U.S.?) I like that both these images are about wind. Her blog is In Soul and her photoblog is Hart & Soul, where she unfolds her beautiful eye and insights into life.

Soul Girl, by Ginnie

Windmills, by Ginnie

7 Bennett  My brother, who passed away in 1996.

I’ve blogged about Bennett a lot. I think there is no one who has shaped my world view more than he did, eight years my senior. He loved to shoot rustic scenes in Nova Scotia and New England. He shot this Greek Orthodox priest in Greece in the 1970s. (Do you think they were related?) Bennett died before the advent of digital photography, and I think he would have loved it, though he also had his own dark room and loved to spend hours deep into the night developing prints. I have no way of knowing if this print I photographed was one he was happy with, since he discarded so many out of perfectionism. My photo of it also does not do it justice, and one of these days we’ll need to scan it or its negative (I think one of my nephews Paul or Todd, see below, might have Ben’s negatives). This photo, which he made a very large print of, won grand prize at a photography show, and was breathtaking. I have also included the poster he used to advertise his work. The grasshopper was his “avatar.” (Again, sorry for the glare on that one.)

Greek Orthodox priest, by Bennett

Bennett's photography show poster

8 John My brother.

John and Bennett are in the photo at right at the Acropolis in 1970 -- John is on the left; click to see their handsome faces better. John is my closest sibling in age, four years my senior. We spent many hours at the kitchen table sketching, and I was always amazed at his abilities. Strange story of synchronicity: As I was preparing this post last weekend, Don found the following charcoal John did of our dad in our barn in my dad’s things, quite by accident, accompanied by the touching poem. In a quick phone call to John he told me he believes he created them together sometime in his teens. I'll type out the poem here, because it touches me and expresses something of my own sense of things growing up.

You were tall and I was small—

I gazed wide-eyed at your legs and feet.

You’d hear the ring, then answer the call

and head off down the street.

(I tried, when you walked,

to follow along, but your steps were hard to reach).

And it seemed to me you never talked,

except to pun or preach.

Your silent side was good for me;

it helped me grow inside.

I watched and listened, and I could see

the heart you couldn’t hide.

I remember well one hurtful day

how you loved me in your quiet way.

You stood at my door with tears in your eyes;

your heart reached for mine with pain-laden sighs.

When I was liddle I watched you diddle—always on your knee;

You were tall and I was small, but I knew it was just for me,

‘cause after awhile—

you’d smile.

~ John

charcoal of Dad, poem to Dad, by John

9 Todd  My nephew – my sister Nancy’s son.

Todd is a web and graphic designer, among many other things. The first image, titled “Esther,” is a pen and ink drawing he created in high school. Todd has also started a photography business doing photo shoots with models (his web site is here). The second image of Margaret was shot during a photo session at our farm.

Esther, by Todd

Margaret, by Todd, shot at our farm

10 Paul  My nephew -- my brother Jim’s son.

Paul's four kids are often his photo subjects. Paul provides design for software professionally and is also quite successful selling his photos at iStock on the side. (His best seller? A hospital emergency sign.) I fell in love with these two portraits of his kids Lydia, Eli, Aden and Clara, when he posted them at his flickr photostream, taken at our family cottage about a month ago. In fact, these images were what got me inspired to do this family gallery. They remind me of a cut-out silhouette we had done at Knott’s Berry Farm when Lesley was little (right).

Clara and Aden, by Paul

Lydia, Eli, Clara and Aden, by Paul, at our cottage

11 Mark My nephew -- Ginnie/Bootsie’s son.

Mark shot this spontaneous family portrait of us on the frozen lake over New Year’s one year. That’s our family cottage on the hill in the upper left of the photo. Mark is a computer programmer and also studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops. I’m trying to remember why we were smiling so geekily in this photo, I think we had just been skating around and slipping on the sliding ice like spazzes. We’ve paused for Mark and are holding on to each other for dear life. Oh! I just noticed . . . that scarf hugging Lesley's head is one of the only things I've ever knitted.

Family Portrait, by Mark

12 Rachel My niece – my brother John’s daughter.

Rachel lives in Utah with her husband Swede and is dying to have her own studio to create art again. She teaches English and math to special needs students in middle school. I just love this acrylic Paris painting, her own version of Starry Night. Don't Swede and Rachel look like they were just tango-ing?

Paris, by Rachel

13 Lesley   My daughter.

Lesley went to art school in Detroit (College for Creative Studies), earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design, and a minor in Fibers. I have some gorgeous wearable art she has made. When she has time and energy after working very hard as a commercial interior designer in NYC, she knits, makes beautiful jewelry and creates re-styled clothes from vintage. I have included her charcoal self-portrait from art school, an interesting technique of covering the paper/canvas with charcoal then rubbing out the drawing with an eraser. Below that is a photo of a retail space she spent about 18 months designing with her boss at Spin Design where she still works, including the design of custom furnishings. I am especially fond of the gold mesh chandelier "sheaths." It is the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet’s newly opened flagship store on 57th Street in NYC. I think the least expensive watch they sell is about $10,000, so please do browse -- you might bump into Arnold Schwarzenegger or Meryl Streep, who are AP customers. I like the juxtaposition of Lesley’s bohemian art school self and the posh watch store.

Self, by Lesley

Audemars Piguet flagship store, designed by Spin Design (by Lesley and her boss)

14 Peter   My son. 

Like my mom, Peter is a remarkable musician (guitarist, arranger). But he is also an artist and amateur photographer. This painting is one he did in Advanced Placement Studio Art in high school, in the manner of Peter Max. The photograph below that is one he shot in Hilo, Hawaii. Peter continually inspires me with his photographs and also excels at videography. (The photo of Peter and me is from a few years ago.)

Purty Gerty, by Peter

Hilo puddle, by Peter

15 Me My self.

I can draw some, but I don’t apply discipline or practice, so just sketching something once or twice a year means I haven’t developed my skills. The sketches span decades: a young man in a magazine while I studied abroad, Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain a couple of years back, an imagined girl 20 years ago, and a drawing for a Christmas card around that same time. If this is not your first visit to this blog, you know I love to take photos. The first photograph below is probably a favorite of mine, shot early one morning in October 2006, when I went out on Horseshoe Lake where our family cottage is, in Lesley’s kayak, with my little point and shoot Olympus. I watched the moon set and the sun rise in that two hour float. If you look very closely, you can see geese on the water at the left. The next photo is the same lake, same morning, the sun rising in fog, just about 30 minutes later. It may look silent, but dozens of geese were honking (like vuvuzelas). It is a strange feeling to hear something so loud and close, that is invisible.

Sketches, by me

two photos of Horseshoe Lake

top: moon setting -- can you see the geese in the mist at the left near the horizon?

bottom: 30 minutes later, sunrise

by me

Well, that's it! Thank you very much for visiting my family gallery today. I know it was long. Bravo for getting down to here. You can put your audio guide thingie over there by the door before you leave. Now the sun is up, and I hope you found some visual pleasure in the comfort of your chair.

There is more artistic talent in my family, including Nelson who designs kitchens, Susan who plays piano like a goddess, Nancy who decorates houses that should be in magazines, Jim who has skilled craftsman hands, and their many children, and their children, who are fragrant with artistic talent as well.

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