Today is October eighth, two thousand and one. Otherwise written as:

Upside down and backwards, today is the same all the way around. Kind of a paradigm of our subject: synchronicity.

Since the September 11 attacks on New York City, Washington DC and the planet in general I have experienced the phenomenon and been with those who also realized, not only what happened, but when it happened. All of the 3 following stories happened in 36 hours.

What else is happening at the most chaotic time New York City has ever seen in its almost 500 year history?

STORY NUMBER #1: The Tip

I bought a top hat on eBay recently. Well, I thought I did. You see, the seller never kicked down.  Except that's not entirely true either. This story is fraught with confusion and reflexivity, to use a good hearted parapsychological term.  

Here's what happened.

I sent the seller my money in the form of a money order and I never received the hat and I was broken hearted. So I filed a complaint with eBay, and they sent me some money to recover my losses. But then the seller sent the hat. (It happened to arrive in conjunction with the events of the story called "Hat Day" below). What is interesting is the math of this one. And then the special "kicker" and the levels of kickers. Try to follow the abstract logic built into this one.

On July 8th, 2001 I sent the seller $61.01.

After a month the top hat never arrived.

On August 4th I did a show for the Metroweb Corporation. They were to pay me via an agent I actually trust because he is a professional circus clown who has paid me for gigs before lickety split. Performer to performer. No bullshit.

The Metroweb Corporation tips me after the show and sent me an extra fifty, which the clown also forwards to me because he is an honest guy.

I think the seller is going to try to rip me off for $61 dollars, and I think, "Well, I just got tipped fifty, so actually I'm only ten down."

As I think this, I walk into a bagel store I frequent. I usually find money on the floor in there. I think about that. I think about the tip the Metroweb corporation give me. A tip, and I'm really only down ten bucks.

I look down on the ground near the cash register, and there is a magician's thumb tip on the ground loaded with two ten dollar bills set up exactly for the Kozlowski bill switch. I immediately know several things about the person who lost their "tip."

A) They were a magician -- this was a professional's prop.

B) The trick was most likely to borrow a twenty and change it into two tens...a rather sophisticated interpretation of the effect.

C) Hence the magician who lost this, was extremely clever, but not so clever as to hold on to his prop and money!

And, the wacky thing, a magician (me) found it, and it not only contained the missing ten from his life, but a "tip" on top of the ten...another ten dollar bill. And what had I been thinking of? Money. Particuarly the fact that I was down ten bucks (in the cosmic sense that is). A tip from a corporation and how I was down ten dollars. So I got the ten dollars, or the missing ten appeared.

I thought to keep the thumb tip intact with the tens in it, but I needed the money and used the thumb tip with the trick to make more money! Wacky, huh?!

STORY NUMBER #2: Film makers & Musicians

A videographer who shot a concert I was involved with at the bandshell emailed me to see if the band I worked with would do movie music. I convey the idea to Rebecca Moore by email. Next day I attend a sneak screening of TREE SIT, the new documentary about the destruction of the eco-system in Northwest America. Rebecca's music is featured. The videographer who initially wrote, did not know of Rebecca's music about to be screened and featured in New York City.

The capper? After the screening, Rebecca and I had a drink with a friend. While talking over a beer and fries, another film maker from Rebecca's past showed up at our table, having put Rebecca's first album (Admiral Charcoal's Song) on that very morning, after not having heard the album in five years. And then the two meet in a restaurant upon the celebration of Rebecca's music in a documentary.

STORY NUMBER #3: Hat Day

September 11, 2001, the morning of the attack on New York City, I was in an office of a company that was about to be visited by NY Governor Pataki in less than 36 hours.

All hell broke loose and the meeting, actually a difficult discussion as to the fate of 6 very specially constructed top hats and their instant appearance for the NY Governor, ended.

The show never happened, the company refused to pay for my services thus rendered since the show never happened, and I lost a lot of money because of all this...

About a week later, on the day that I returned the hats to the company, very early in the morning due to the difficulties of transporting suspicious baggage on public transportation, we arrived at the company of America Works Inc. to return the top hats at 8am.

Later, at approximately 8:50am I picked up two packages waiting for me at my post office.

One was a top hat from 1939 that I had purchased on eBay about 14 weeks earlier.

The other package was from the International Buster Keaton Society.

The contents? Two baseball caps I had ordered about 6 weeks prior.

On a day that I return 6 top hats, I receive three hats in the mail.

Hats. 6 out. 3 in.

In less than one hour in New York City. All of the hats (much less top hats) had different times attached to them. The America Works hats...a long haul to get them customized. The old top hat; many years and a painfully slow delivery by the seller (who got kicked off of eBay for this stuff), the Keaton baseball caps were also a long acquired item.

All are black.

All had to do with magic.

The top hats I returned were now a bad memory of a dead deal and a falling out with a friend.

The Keaton hats replaced my bad feeling with joy.

Hats I did not want were replaced with hats I did want.

Including a top hat surrounded in chaos. I believed I'd been ripped off by the seller of the top hat when it never arrived and I put eBay and the postal authorities on to the seller...

All the hats had high chaos attached.

-The dead deal Pataki top hats: money and friendship chaos.

-Keaton: delightful surreal chaos.

-The eBay top hat: potential criminal chaos

CONCLUSION:

Is the master lesson that we "wear many hats? "

Is the great comedian in the sky taunting us with yet another conundrum to take our minds off the evil at hand? Is my subjective obsession an illusion I apprehend as real?

Is nothing miraculous here, or is another layer of reality kicking in because the yang of darkness must have its compliment in the yin of synchronicity?

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