While I was walking down the sidewalk today with my friend Kim in the 69-degree calm before the cold thunderstorm, we saw a praying mantis! We warned two innocent passersby (one who had just bought two Zen books at Babbitt's!) not to step on it, and then there was a sudden convergence of we two caffeine-tipsy women, a local television news reporter who had once interviewed Kim**, a local radio news reporter who had recently interviewed me***, and the Poetry Radio producer**** who has aired a bunch of my poems, standing around a praying mantis on the sidewalk.
1) I love the freakiness of my life, but 2) it is a little freaky.
*Excellent idea! Ladies of my own book group: let's do this. Bring some books you're done with, and let's exchange them!
**I'm not telling you the topic of Kim's interview, but let's just say it's biological without involving insects.
***About the annual cemetery walk.
****One of the male Poetry Radio producers, not the female you see when you click the link above. But the female you see was, by coincidence, sitting in the window of the fresh-food deli, typing madly on her laptop, and Kim and I had just stopped to stare at her through the picture window and freak her out until she smiled at us. Right after the praying mantis congregation, we did it again.
I don't want you to get too out there on a limb with the coincidence stuff, but Laurens Van der Post wrote a book called A Mantis Carol some years ago, and yes, it is full of coincidii and Jungian synchronicity and everything else.
ReplyDeleteI can count on you, seana, to recommend books that make me feel part of the human/mantis/wind/rain/earth community.
ReplyDeletei think this is where i'm supposed to comment on your hair? the fact that you actually look much younger than your photograph? is that right? is this the place? will we be holding another mantis convention anytime soon? inquiring minds want to know.
ReplyDeleteSo, what are you saying, Kim? That my profile picture is slightly deceptive, in making me look older than I am?
ReplyDeleteSeana has recommended to me A Mantis Carol, which I remember having read about in the past, by Laurens Van der Post, and now I am longing for it for Christmas. Seana always appeals to the elemental me!
It's sunny! Maybe we will indeed stumble upon another mantis. Not literally stumble....
That's a nice compliment. I need to reread A Mantis Carol myself, though I think my own copy is buried somewhere deep in storage.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that poetry broadcast link. It will be fun to check out.
Seana, I came in to work today and found, not A Mantis Carol, but Laurens Van der Post's novel, A Story like the Wind....!! (which relates to earlier "when I was the wind" coincidence) so I will have to buy this one instead!
ReplyDeleteKathleen, A Story Like the Wind and its sequel, A Far Off Place are two of my favorite novels of all time. Much better to start here and read A Mantis Carol later.
ReplyDeleteI am currently living out the wind/rain portion of our dialogue, by the way.
Also my word verifier word is 'poron', which is what I hope doesn't happen to me today...
So funny! I hope it doesn't pour on you!
ReplyDelete