Surreal Synchronicity

It seems I live my life by synchronicity.  I start out in one direction and receive unexpected affirmation or challenge from something or someone I thought was entirely unrelated.  But wait!  Aren't all things connected in the great web of consciousness?  Must be so.

This afternoon we were inspired to write about a character I haven't developed or even written about by Angelique Mroczka on the HerStory facebook page. I picked a turn of the 20th century character I mean to write about someday. Like my Fawsettwood Witches, she is a past life memory. Here is my character's comment: 

I am a student at Newnham College in Cambridge. Women aren't allowed admission in the men's colleges, so this one and Girton have been established for women. Cambridge is a heady place to live. Famous people, great intellects, ideas floating on the Cam. I love it. I am a doctor's daughter, but we are not rich so I work at the perfumery in the town centre. The proprietor is an alchemist of sorts, steeped in herbs and potions. Fragrances are only half of what we sell. I sometimes wonder which is the source of my greatest education: the books and ideas espoused by my tutor or the formulas I learn at the shop. My father would disapprove were he aware the shop sells herbal remedies. What my father does not learn then will not trouble me. The shop smells divine even in the street

The shop is still there.  Eric and I walked by it in Cambridge last summer.  As soon as I smelled it, I knew I had worked there when I was a student 100 years ago. It was an uncanny experience.  Today, I had to check the spelling of Newnham College so I "Binged" it.  Don't you know one of the women who founded the college had a last name of Fawcett! Different spelling.  Same witches.  Well, she likely was no witch, but the thread of synchronicity hit me squarely in the face. I would say this is a surreal experience, but that strikes another chord of memory.

Earlier this week I was chatting electronically with an artist friend in the Southern Tier of NY. Her name is Lizzy Greenhood. She introduced me to women surrealist artists and writers, an entire niche with which I was unfamiliar.  They resonated immediately right down to my core. Surrealist writers and artists try to harmonize ordinary reality and dreaming into a single understanding.  They put unlikely things together with photographic clarity to shock the sensibilities into something new or deeper in our wisdom. Because of the unchallenged sexism of the male leaders in the movement, the women have been largely ignored.

Homenaje a Frida Kahlo
by Gem Diaz shared on Wikimedia.org
used with permission

On the other hand, I have had many encounters with Frida Kahlo over the years, one of my favorite women painters in the western hemisphere.  And Georgia O'Keefe. It simply never occurred to me there were writers too.  Duh! And who were they, other than Lenora Carrington?  Here is a link to a list and a book about them: Surrealist Women. I suspect I will be studying and writing more about them in the next year. I want to be named among them!

Fact of the matter is, I have to discipline myself to suppress my natural surrealistic style of writing.  One, it is hard to understand.  Two, I had not credited myself with being connected to anyone in the leaps of fancy my rough drafts take. Oh.  Connectedness again. Interconnectedness of being.   Gracious Goddess, I have learned something else about my voice. In so doing, I realize my character from Newnham College in Cambridge whom I knew became a minor writer most likely connected with the early surrealists.  Well, there is another great leap forward in consciousness!

And that, dear readers, is how life works.