Star Date 5.15.09

What’s the purpose of coincidence? Does the name alone transfer all degrees of improbability to mere mathematical chance? Are we simply placed in front of astronomical odds purely by value that we ourselves are housings of billions upon billions of constant calculations and this is how we perceive the improbable? Could it be that there is a hidden faculty inside us that transmits these calculations and fires back answers in the form of an unconscious “coincident”? I asked myself these questions last night as I lay awake in my bed, my head spinning with calculation after calculation, musings, whimsy and daydreams. This wasn’t a normal sleepless night that usually plagues my ‘twelve year old on mountain dew’ brain. These thoughts hadn’t been simply conjured by myself, they were more likely brought to my attention. Let me back up.

I was laying down on my box spring absent mattress, hugged close by gravity to the concrete below. When I decided that the fight between me and the sandman was a loss. I kicked off my sheets like a white flag and swiveled to the side of the bed so my feet were on the ground, my knees coming up to my chin. I waited for that initial head spin to subside, you know, the kind you get when you sit up too fast or in my case work out for 10 minutes. What is it about the stillness of night that pairs so nicely with cigarette smoke? That’s a question I am content with never knowing, it’s already tangible, the feeling I mean, just no fitting words for it. This is similar to the question that arose as I stood outside in my boxers, a coat and a cigarette dangling from my lips.

Moments before my vision lit up with yellow flame I was standing inside putting on my coat when I heard a familiar song coming from the upstairs computer. My roommate had gone out and forgot to turn off his computer, which is odd because he’s one of those OCD freaks that can’t leave the house if things are left on. It didn’t bother me, on the contrary I grew up in an incredibly noisy household, the constant hum of music and shuffled feet to me is like the quiet sounds of a babbling brook to others. I never could understand how people slept with those “pleasant” noise makers on their night tables. You know what I’m talking about, those brookstone clock radios that play sounds like, a rainforest full of soft drizzle filled rain and happy monkeys. Or an empty field filled with sounds of tall colliding grass and the rare sound of a melancholy chirp from a cricket or swallow. That’s the kind of garbage that keeps me up at night, consistency, constant artificial pleasantness. And seeing as my life has been heading in a direction of consistent actions I suppose perhaps the predictability of the week had left me no surprises for the next morning, and so, my brain had gone to work to invent some. But the song that was coming from the room upstairs was one I knew quite well so I let it play as I walked outside, happy to let things just be.

The sound of the bass pulsed slightly and reached my ears outside the way a scream sounds through a pillow. I sparked up and leaned back against the doorframe almost in one fluid motion. The rhythm of the song was felt in my back though the framing and traveled up to my head. It started to grow, getting louder and more present. The bass began to grow into treble and seemed to be moving from my left ear to my right, as if I was wearing headphones. I looked to the street and there it was, the sound. It was some young kid at two in the morning coming around the bend with his windows down. And wouldn’t you know it he was playing the exact same song, but not just the same song, the same song at the exact same point in the song. It took me a minute to actually fully register what had happened. And then a few minutes to fully grasp the heaviness of it.

The computer upstairs has over 2000 songs on it. It was playing in alphabetical order by artist. I only was able to hear one small part of one song as I walked upstairs. The man outside in his car wasn’t even listening to the radio he was listening to a CD, I know this because the song was uncensored. I was outside because I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep because my head wouldn’t shut up. I was smoking my last cigarette. It was 2:35 in the morning and there wasn’t a soul on this street except for me. What are the odds that the two of us would be listening to the same song at the same time? Those odds alone are pretty great. But even greater is the fact that I knew about it. I’m sure all of us at one point have been doing some routine task and have thought “I wonder how many people are also brushing their teeth right now?” But this is something more, if he and I had done anything slightly different this moment would have never happened and I would have been able to sleep. But it didn’t, I didn’t have to look around for my jacket, or find my left flip flop, or wait more than I waited to even get out of bed.

So I was left wondering why all those events had led up to something so anti climatic. Something with no surface value, no intrinsic gain, except to wonder why. But maybe that’s the point entirely.

On a night when your head is full of questions it’s better not to pursue them. Sleepless nights are a hunt for ghosts. You feel them when your alone, turn on the lights and their gone, tells your friends and receive blank stares. They will always be with us, always out of reach and full of a presence that cannot be ignored.