Einstein Plugged In: The Theory of “Real-activity”

Effort equals Motion times Coincidence Squared (E=MC2 ). All I did was take Al Einstein’s relativity formulation and apply some alternating current (AC) – plugging it in, so to speak, and transforming “relativity” into “realactivity.” That’s what happens when one acts as an agent of synchronicity and consciously recognizes that there is a reason behind the coincidental occurrence of events that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality. Carl Jung posited this notion at the end of the 19th century. It didn’t really come into vogue until about 20 years ago and got a big boost from the series of books that have been generated by James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy.

As Redfield explains on the book flaps of his most recent installment in this series entitled The Celestine Vision, “Increasingly more of us, it seems, are becoming aware of the meaningful coincidences that occur
every day. Some of these events are large and provocative. Others are small, almost imperceptible. But all of them give us evidence that we are not alone, that some mysterious spiritual process is influencing our lives. Once we experience the sense of inspiration and aliveness that these perceptions evoke, it is almost impossible not to pay attention. We begin to watch for these events, to expect them, and to actively seek a higher philosophical understanding of their appearance. . . . Both of my novels are what I call adventure parables. They were my way of illustrating what I believe is a new spiritual awareness sweeping humanity.”

It has been my experience that volunteerism is one of the most fertile grounds for activating synchronicity. What’s really interesting, though, is that a quick check in any dictionary reveals the following tidbit: voluntarism, (an alternate spelling) also just happens to be the name of a theory that conceives free will to be the dominant factor in experience or in the world.

Wow.

This means that if you get off your butt and donate your time to lend a helping hand to any of a myriad of worthwhile causes (motion), and then pay close attention to the many coincidences that abound in a typical day, most of which usually go unnoticed, you can consciously set into motion any number of meaningful synchronicities that could have far-reaching, highly beneficial consequences. Once they get used to doing this, most people get excited about looking for synchronicities and soon find that the more coincidences they set into motion, the less effort is required.

A bonus consequence is that synchronicities act as boomerangs – you know, “what goes around, comes around.”

I clearly remember the first time I realized that I had consciously helped to activate a set of synchronicities that resulted in a happy marriage, fulfilling employment for a near-destitute person, and a new circle of great friends. And the only thing I’d done was give a friend’s business card to a homeless man.

It was like knocking over the first domino.

Kodak was his street name. His street compadres called him this because his drawings were almost like photographs – a homeless Norman Rockwell. We met at a local soup kitchen one of the times when I had volunteered to sling hash. What intrigued me about him was that he was sketching something on a napkin at a table in the corner by the kitchen door.
When I finally found a few moments to find my way over to him and introduce myself, I caught a glimpse of his drawing. Much to my surprise, his subject looked familiar – as it should have, because it was yours truly! I asked him why he had chosen to put my ugly mug on paper, and his answer was that I was the only one behind the counter who was smiling. I also presented a challenge since I was constantly in motion – most likely attributable, I told him, to the animated gestures that accompany my jokes. At this point, while consciously looking for a reason for our “chance” meeting, I casually put my hand into my pocket and felt the card that would answer my question – it was the business card of one of my friends who had been looking for a local artist to paint a mural on his back garden wall. Kodak accepted it without much ado, so I really never expected anything to come of it.

The surprise voicemail message came several months later. It was my friend Paul: “Hey, Bob. Paul here. Just wanted to thank you for sending that terrific artist my way! I’d like you to come to a little get-together I’m having this Sunday afternoon to welcome Spring by sharing the beautiful mural your friend just completed – you know, the one I’d been trying to get painted for a couple of years? Come around 3. No RSVP necessary. You will be there! Don’t make me come get you! Take care.”

Both weather and mural were exquisite. Kodak was there that Sunday, too, which really surprised me, since he usually shies away from gatherings of any size. That’s when I saw him smile – beam, actually – for the first time. He walked away that day with no fewer than five new projects. As he stopped to stay hello on his way out of the garden, he discreetly handed me a small envelope, put an index finger to his lips and quietly told me to wait until I got home to open it. Now that was more like the Kodak I had come to know the past several months during which, by the way, he had acquired a nice little apartment with a loft that he turned into a studio.

What awaited me in that envelope was the finished sketch of me he had started that day in the soup kitchen. I am now the proud owner of an original Kodak, a limited edition of one, that hangs in my foyer. Attached to the bottom of his picture is a makeshift holder for the business cards I made for him that are free for the taking by any of my visitors who might be interested in commissioning his talent.

I’ve already refilled it three times.

By the way, it just so happens that one of those visitors was my friend, Annabelle, who admired the sketch when she first saw it, but declined to take one of Kodak’s cards. Annabelle and I get along so well because we share what some of our friends term a “raucous sense of humor bordering on mischief.” I have heard some people attribute her jocundity to her ample girth, a problem that has plagued her most of her life. We are also both writers. The purpose of her visit that day was to recruit me as her aid in interviewing local homeless people for a compilation of stories she wanted to write on how it was that people ended up in such circumstances. I agreed to help get her started with her first one or two interviews. While she ducked into my bathroom to powder her nose just before she left, one of Kodak’s cards “accidentally on purpose” found its way into the outer pocket of her purse.

That’s how she met the love of her life.

No, not Kodak. Jimmy, my friend, the personal fitness trainer.

It turns out that while Annabelle was performing her annual “purse purge,” Kodak’s card fell out right on top of everything else that she had dumped out. She finally recognized Kodak as the artist of my sketch and recalled my having told her that he was homeless when I had first met him. She still needed some more material for her little compendium, so she decided to give him a call and he agreed to let her interview him. Jimmy was just leaving Kodak’s pad when she showed up for her appointment a week later. Jimmy has an eye for fitness potential, especially when it can translate into another success story, and that’s how Annabelle got his card as they briefly exchanged introductions in passing that day. She literally ran into him as she tore around the corner of Kodak’s row house, late for her appointment, as always. I think that’s why Jimmy tells people that he knew she was a real “knockout” from the moment they met.

The rest is history.

Annabelle gained a great story and lost 150 pounds in the ensuing months, with Jimmy’s help. She’s now a gorgeous bride-to-be, and with Jimmy has invited me to their wedding this afternoon. Oh yeah – Kodak will also be there to present them with their wedding portrait.

So I’d better get a move on.

After all, it wouldn’t look good if the best man were to show up late.

© 2003 Robert R. Cole

Where Were You on 9/11?

Just a morning like any other – almost mid-September and, although nice and cool in the morning, we’re in for a triple "H"’er (Hot, Humid ‘n Hazy). They say it’ll get up to the high 80s today. We’re paying for the nice spats of weather we had in July and August. The ride on the commuter train (“MARC”) affords me my usual 45-minute snooze from Baltimore Penn Station to D.C.’s Union Station. Then it’s into the morning rush-hour commuter throngs pressed together for four subway stops.

The morning air outside the subway is cool and crisp at 7:15. The sky is in that transition between the nearly hot white of summer and the deeper azure of autumn. Making my way across K Street to Farragut Park, I notice that the grass is a nice, lush green, with rows of lush mums crowding the base of General Farragut’s statue. The cops have chased away all but a couple of the penniless, homeless overnight guests of the city, still covered with several pages of the financial section of the Post. I spy K Street Kate as I cross 17th Street, give her a smile and two bits as she returns a toothless grin. That’s her corner. Squatter’s rights. She salutes me with two gnarly black-nailed fingers to her eyebrow, and I return the salute. I wonder if she’s related to that bag lady in Atlanta who made $50K last year, tax free.

I hurry up to the top of I and 17th Streets to buy my fresh fruit cup from the Pakistani vendor, who is always smiling and wishing me a good morning. Two minutes later, I’m in my building and at my desk.

9:30 a.m. I head for the window to check the weather after hearing a tremendous thunderboom. The fire alarms sound as I reach the windows that look toward the Pentagon. The only black I see is in the form of huge, billowy plumes of smoke and fire coming from Arlington. The building shakes, reminiscent of a California earthquake aftershock. Confusion ensues: What the heck is going on here? No thunderstorm; earthquake?

Our building’s security guards are now on my floor, urging everyone to evacuate the building immediately and try to get home as best we can. “All mass transportation has come to a standstill,” they inform us. “Try to find a ride, a boat, walk or sprout wings.”

As I race down the stairs and out to the sidewalk, I see people running by and screaming or crying, sirens blaring, cops on bikes, on horseback and in patrol cars. EMS vans stream by on K Street one after the other. I glance down a block toward the White House and see many shiny black sedans, limos, and LTDs on Pennsylvania Avenue. Cops are starting to ring the periphery of the grounds down there. I glance at my watch: 9:55. I decide to take my chances and cut across Farragut Park to the subway. It’s a good thing that I turned on my internal divine autopilot – that little voice that guides me intuitively – and jump-started it by sending a last-minute memo to Dude Almighty to keep an eye out for me.

The street-level gates clang shut with a grinding squeal just behind me. I am one of the last few they let into the subway station. Down into the bowels under General Farragut’s statue I go. As the view opens up around the corner and I descend the second-level escalator, I see a sea of humanity; a crowd so dense I can’t even see an inch of the platform. Do I really want to be down here? Too late. I’ve committed. The steely gates are locked behind and above me. There’s no place to go but down into the rat tunnels. As I reach the platform, the train toward Union Station arrives. I have already been pulled and pushed into the middle of the melee; now I have no choice. A strange force of moving bodies plops me magically into one of the cars. “PLEASE STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS,” whines the monotone robotic voice. During rush hour, you can hear this up to about four times as the commuters on board the train arch their backs and curve their arms clear of the door sensors so they can get on their way. This time the mechanical conductor is already on the eighth announcement, and will reach number ten before the doors are clear and the cattle car, groaning under the weight of the equivalent of two and a half rush hours, ambles through the tunnel.

We seem to be exiting the tunnel into the Judiciary Square station too quickly; the throngs of platform passengers are a blur as we stream past into the next tunnel, twisting tortuously to the right on the long leg to Metro Center, a main transfer point and juncture of three or four subway lines. And so we continue, hurtling into the darkness, then the light of each station… ”Gallery Place – Chinatown” … Snippets of the morning’s events clip my ears but don’t stick; they’re flying too fast in too many directions: “It was two planes, one for each tower…, “someone says. And another: “ …Nobody could have gotten out of there in time…” “There were people jumping from over 90 floors up…” We come to a screeching halt at Union Station. “Everyone must leave the train – this is the final stop. The subway is closed. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the street level and outside. Union Station is also now closed.” Great. Well, at least I got this far. Up a short escalator, all turnstiles now open – too crowded to worry about everyone inserting their fare cards and grabbing them on the other side – heading toward the final, long escalator to the street.

She is trying her best to single-handedly maintain order in her little underground kingdom. I’ve tangled with her a few times in the past, this representative of rabbit-hole commuting. You have to cock your head to one side to read her nametag today: “Mazey.” It’s dangling by a single brad, apparently half-unfastened by the throngs pressing in on her for what must be almost an hour by now. “Do not go into the station…” and then she turns quickly, having caught sight of another miscreant trying to sidle past people on the escalator by sitting on the rubber handrail. Just as suddenly, she is off in yet a third direction, her face taut, strained, and distraught with the sinking feeling that she is no longer in control. She melts like butter into the throngs pressing me from behind.

A small patch of blue is visible past all the people above me. My watch reads 10:20 as we collide with the chaos above.

A strange mix of D.C. subway personnel, D.C. cops, and National Guards tries to keep the crowds bubbling up from the depths of the subway from colliding with the streams of people evacuating the main halls of Union Station. It’s not working. As I near the top of the mechanical stairway, each step two or even three abreast, the people on the three steps above me seem to be falling backwards. We are hurtling into a solid, unyielding wall of people at the top of the exit. Everyone is hanging onto the moving, rubber handrails for fear of falling backwards like a line of dominoes. The tension is so great, I can feel the handrail slipping and starting to buckle. I decide to punch my own hole in the crowd, jumping diagonally in-between two clumps of people ahead and above me. Once outside, I keep on moving, fearing that to stop would mean to stop for good and become part of the huge, writhing molasses snake of bodies.

Emptying Union Station has created a sight so mind-boggling it can only be described as a sea of people as far as you can see, so many people that you can’t even see the pavement; so many people that cars are not going to even crawl an inch for hours.

“Keep your eyes and ears open – pay attention!” So directs my divine autopilot. At least I know the Dude got my memo. I overhear someone saying that the bus station is still open. I head for the station on foot, down one street to find a faster route clear of bodies and machinery. The Northeast District is not a nice place to be walking, even during the daytime. Suddenly rounding a corner, four Arabs come running in my direction, fists held high and shaking rebelliously in the air, and they are chanting over and over again: “Congratulations!” in Arabic. They’re too drunk with their celebration to even notice me as I pass on by. My blood starts to curdle, as I hope they keep up their celebration as they exit onto Union Station Square, where they will be vastly outnumbered. I check my anger and grief, and keep on moving. Glancing to my left down the next cross street, I catch a glimpse of some young white skinheads rocking a car appearing to contain some Arab youths. Both groups are shouting in rage at each other. I pick up my pace.

I don’t have to get much closer than two blocks to the bus station to know it too is closed. Another sea of people. Time to regroup. No public transportation at all. Not a cab in sight; even if there were, where would it go? I could walk faster. “Go to that other bus station on New York Avenue,” my inner voice nudges me. I head up New York Avenue, for ten blocks. There’s the station. This one is deserted. My autopilot insists: “Check the alley that the buses use to leave from the back of the station.”

Glancing down the street toward the alley, I see the last bus at that station poke its nose out to check for traffic before pulling out. I soon find myself firmly planted in front of the bus, gasping wildly for breath and yelling: “Hey, Mac – you headed for Baltimore?” The driver leans out the window and answers: “Hey, Mac – are you crazy, standing in front of my bus?” Laughing nervously, I continue the crazy dialogue: “Yeah, I’m crazy, but are you going to Baltimore?” He laughs, looks around as if his supervisor might be watching, then motions me aboard, where I don’t mind standing all the way to Baltimore if I have to. The bus heads down what must be the only clear side street in the District, wending its way to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

Two young girls in tank tops and shorts wag their tongues at each other in Polish – tourists, it turns out, who picked the wrong day for a trip to the Capital. Their next stop was to be New York City, then Warsaw. They might not even get back to Warsaw. I catch bits of French here, German there, a little Italian, and even some English. It strikes me as odd how diverse a people we are, yet we still manage to get along, sometimes and in some ways better than others, but we muddle along nevertheless. Why does it always take some kind of crisis to get people to pull together and help each other, smile at each other, offer a comforting word? Shouldn’t that be the way we are all the time?

We make it to the BW Parkway and travel along for a while until suddenly the bus shudders and starts sputtering thick, black smoke. The driver pulls over and we all pile out. Before we know it, we are surrounded by National Guardsmen. Then I realize that we have broken down just outside of the National Security Agency. Great place to break down on a day like today.

We’re searched and released. I continue on foot along the Parkway for seven miles toward Baltimore. It’s in the 80s, but I don’t care. My load is light, I love to walk, and it’s no longer a summer sun that beats down relentlessly on my face and neck – we’re moving into Fall. And I’m moving toward Baltimore using the only reliable transportation I have – my size 11s.

Around mile 7, a black Mercedes honks, pulls onto the shoulder, and the driver’s head is visible as he leans out the window and shouts: “Hey, Bob is that really you? Need a ride?” As I get closer, I realize it’s a colleague from a former government job I had about 10 years ago. What a coincidence – or is it? We come to a standstill a mile out of the city. I soon learn that Baltimore, too, is closed. We appear to be at war, but with whom? Has anyone seen the enemy?

From this vantage point, I can see the beautiful Baltimore City skyline. I look at it realizing that this may be the last time I see it. This thought captures my attention for the remaining 7 miles on foot to my front door. The America we wake up to tomorrow will be vastly different from the America we woke up to this morning. We have already suffered God knows how many losses; but we have also begun to recapture our lost national spirit.

© 2001 Robert R. Cole

Proud To Be an American

“From a distance, you look like my friend,
Even though we are at war….”

She introduced herself as Elena Fedorovna when we met nine months ago at the public library, withholding her surname in traditional xenophobic form until she knew more about me. Hailing from Akadem Gorodok near Moscow, Russia, Elena immigrated to the U.S. almost a year ago, a seamstress by day and student citizen most nights, taking courses in English, U.S. history, government and the like. Synchronicity brought us together that first day. She knew just enough English to ask simple questions, but her eyes would glaze over as soon as a response exceeded the confines of the dialogues in her basic English textbook. The Russian-language newspaper I was reading that day was like a neon sign to her: “Information Desk – Russian Spoken Here.” After a brief introduction and assessment of my ability to help her in her native tongue, this matronly 45-year-old product of Soviet society engaged me in conversation and we soon warmed up to each other. By the time we left that evening, she had somehow recruited me as her English language tutor – gratis, of course. For the next six months, the library was our Little Red Schoolhouse two and sometimes three evenings per week. Each session always started with a review of her most recent homework assignment.

On one such evening last October, Elena slid her assignment sheet on the table in front of me, purposely lingering her neatly manicured hand for a few seconds to make sure I noticed the U.S. flag design she had placed neatly on each nail. A little overdone, but cute - in an “in-your-face” kind of way. I chuckled.

“Dobryj vecher,” she greeted me with a Russian “Good evening.”

“Uh-uh, speak only English, Elena. Don’t you have a language test coming up?”

“OH-kay, Meesterrr Bob.” Speaking Russian for 45 years had engrained a weird sense of where to accent words in other languages. “I MUST converrrrse with you at this moment rrregarrrrding this homewehrrrrk assignment. You know how language is easy for me, but this one stumps me.” I was convinced she would always trrrrill herrrr rrrrrs.

I glanced at the instructions. They were straightforward: “Fill in each blank with the proper adjectival form of the State name. For example: Phillip, from Oregon, decided to donate blood at the Red Cross with his fellow ______________ to help victims of the recent national tragedy.” The answer was given as “Oregonians.” 20 similar sentences followed. I winced.

“Why on earth would they give you an exercise like this? I would think they would have you researching geography or history.”

“Meesterrr Bob. Pleeeez.” Elena tried to hurry me with a sense of urgency. I felt like I was being plowed under by a Russian tank driver during a frenzied potato harvest. “I have only 15 minutes with you tonight. I must go visit cousin in hospital beforrre doors close. You must check assignment now. I have no time forrr jokes.”

Ignoring my obvious annoyance at her brusque approach, she plowed ahead: “First check the ones I have done and then help me with these two blanks.”

I checked her penciled-in entries. She would always use a pencil until consulting with me, then would neatly erase and replace her answers in ink, Waterman fountain pen, indelible peacock blue.

“Joseph and his Californian family decided to contribute two hours every Saturday to help clean up national memorials in downtown San Francisco.”

Pretty good, so far.

“Bobbie Sue likes to donate her spare time teaching English as a second language to future Kentuckians in her home town, Louisville.

Oh, this was too easy. Several entries later, it got a little tougher. I encountered Elena’s first “stumper”:

“Clyde was one of the first _______________ to suggest that little flags be displayed from every street sign in his neighborhood. This was such a popular idea that it has now caught on in several neighborhoods in his home town in Maine.”

“All I could think of was Mainiac for theees one.”

I looked at her incredulously. She had to be joking. She finally gave a little chortle.

“I was hoping you were kidding. I knew you were too smart to be serious about that answer.” To be truthful, I myself was stumped at this one. I was suddenly sidetracked by the ingenuity of this little exercise.

“Elena, do you see what all these sentences have in common?”

She furrowed her brow in a silent, quizzical expression: “What arrrre you talking about?”

“Look, Elena, look at this next one you left blank: François recently returned to his native New Orleans to work with his fellow ________________ for Habitat for Humanity.”

She paused, glanced at that and the rest of the sentences on the sheet, then scooped up the paper and dashed off, shouting behind her: “I think I see the patterrrrrn. Verrry cleverrrr.”

I watched bemused as she scurried off to an adjoining table and began erasing her previous answers, bits of rubber flying everywhere as she blew on her paper. At one point during this frenzy she suddenly stopped, looked me squarely in the eye, silently directing me to look elsewhere. I obliged and returned to my own reading.

Within minutes she had finished, gathered up her belongings, plopped her paper in front of me and dashed out of the library, my words trailing after her like airborne orphan eraser bits: “But, Elena, don’t you want to wait until I…?”

Then I glanced at her revisions and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Our dear Elena had erased all her previous answers and carefully replaced each one with the same word. That word, neatly filling all 20 blanks in ink, Waterman fountain pen, indelible peacock blue, was:

“American.”

I don’t know about her instructor, but I gave her an “A+”.

“From a distance, I cannot comprehend,
What all this fighting’s for.
From a distance, we live in harmony,
And peace echoes throughout the land.
It’s the hope of hopes;
It’s the love of loves;
It’s the song of everyman.”

-- Bette Midler
© 2002 Robert R. Cole

Evolinguistica

Evolinguistica?

So what the heck is that, anyway?

For one thing, it is a new blog I plan on starting sometime in the next few days.

For another thing, it is one of Yours Truly's original neologisms. I needed a word to convey not only the direction of living languages, but how the way language evolves indicates how humanity is evolving. It should be a word mellifluous enough to entice the reader to repeat it, perhaps even a third time. It also had to be a name composed of letters that effortlessly interrelate, as if they always belonged together in the same order to fulfill the same purpose.

Realizing that there was probably only one way I could accomplish such a task, I embarked on one of my favorite pastimes: the thought journey that would lead to just the right neologism that would satisfy all my requirements. Since I am my own worst taskmaster, Evolinguistica wasn’t birthed until about four hours later.

“Language” must evolve as we evolve. It is how we primarily express ourselves in order to see ourselves as clearly as possible. At this crucial juncture of becoming collectively conscious of ourselves, living language as we know it is about to take the most fascinating journey since the moment we created it. The difficult mission we have assigned to language is to become, at least in the nascent stages of the quantum that we are about to leap, a global intercommunication in such a way that we can somehow figure out how to elevate it to a higher, less physically manifested (yet dramatically more sentient than it is now) mode of communication. That could be some type of telepathy, let’s say, or maybe even a more perfect offspring of telekinesis, or better yet, telempathy. Yeah, yeah, I know, my second neologism already.

But that’s what this is all about. The process of helping our living language learn how to evolve right alongside "Ourself." Coining new words and phrases is one of the best methods of many to restructure language so that it remains germane to each level of raised consciousness we attain as we evolve.

Can language become a conscious entity in its own right so that it recognizes itself as the perfect expression of Ourself emerging from the dense human realm, and to independently respond to its own urgent creative impulse to BECOME?

That is but one of many questions I hope to investigate here. Others are:

• How do languages survive the rigors of human evolution? What factors make languages become extinct?

• Of the languages currently in use which show no signs of becoming extinct, what are the common threads among them that make them "survivors"? What unique features does each have that have made it a "survivor"?

• What effect does the noosphere have on the natural selection of languages?

• The majority of instant communication on the internet is conducted via the written word. How does this affect the way we communicate as a global community?

As this site develops, I hope to introduce other categories to interact with evolinguistica from different perspectives.

• Neologistics - A section on neologisms will accept submissions that demonstrate how languages themselves are forcing newly coined expressions upon us so quickly that it is difficult to tell whether the human or the language itself coined the word or phrase.

• Lexiconnections - This section will demonstrate how languages, especially their lexicons, are influencing each other more and more rapidly as we move further into the 21st century. This inluence appears to be growing into a confluence as even languages from different families encroach upon and finally leave behind larger parts of their lexicons on the branches of many different family trees.

• NooSlogans - The title itself suggests that some neologistics have taken place here already by combining noos + slogan to make the resultant phonetics sound like new slogans. Those dedicated to this post-modern theory of enlightened global consciousness have been getting better and better at centering themselves in the present moment. Words and expressions such as the ability to be simultaneously nowhere and nowhere no longer puzzle them. A new NooSlogan will be featured each day at the top of the right-hand panel of this home page.
  
  
• Random Acts of Unconditional Love - This will be a list of shorter anecdotes based on events that I have experienced along my path less taken, or along anyone else's with whom I have shared a close communion of heart and soul (... and blood, sweat and tears, sometimes...). I'm not quite finished with the first story, which is why you can't click on it yet.
  
  
• Evolinks - Sorry, couldn't resist!
  
  
• Bloglottal Stops Along the Journey - (And you thought "Evolinks" was bad! ) I highly reccomend these short readings or "byte-sized" audio snacks that I promise won't spoil your lunch.
  

I hope the content here will spark some lively and substantive discussions. I will also be introducing myself little by little along the way, so be patient with the shy guy. :)

Above all, enjoy yourselves.

Bob (or bobyglot, if you prefer...)