Convergence

Another synchronicity, one not unlike the incident at the bar …

I closed on the sale of my former home November 6, and as we were waiting to leave the attorney’s office, I struck up a conversation with my realtor. I told her a story I’d heard some time ago about a condominium building in Greenville where prices had spiked dramatically after it was announced that a city park would be developed close by.

The realtor hadn’t heard the story and was intrigued, but dubious. Surely such a thing would have burned up the professional grapevine, she said. Did the building have a name? I’d forgotten. Did the park? I’d forgotten that, too.

In fact, I thought, maybe I hadn’t heard the story at all. The mind plays tricks.

From closing, I drove to County Square to change record of my primary residence from the place I’d just sold to the place I live now. That done, I exited the property tax office into what I thought was the main hall, but the camera that had been tracking me panned away to a swarthy little man holding an unfiltered cigarette. He was there to tell the television audience that I’d just entered The Twilight Zone, and here’s why …

1. Walking into the property tax office as I was walking out of it was a couple whose path crosses mine almost never. “Well, hello!” I said, “What brings you here?” They replied that they’d just sold their former home and were at the tax office to do exactly what I’d just finished doing.
2. Instantly, it dawned on me that the story I’d been trying to tell not an hour earlier was theirs. Yes, City Homes at Markley, they reminded me. Mayberry Park being constructed next door. (I’d relay this information to my realtor that afternoon in the vein of “You’re not going to believe this, but …”)
3. So did I have any plans for Thanksgiving, they wanted to know. Not yet, I told them. Would I like to join them at Soby’s, then? November 26 at 12:30? Of course, I said. Of course. Because at this point the synchronicity valve was wide open. By which I mean to say that we’ve eaten together exactly twice, this couple and I, in all the time I’ve known them, and the first of those meals happens to be when they told me the story.

Hit play. Rewind. Hit play again.

And here, for the numerology mavens among you, is what we theatrical types call “the button”: I closed on the purchase of my current home May 6, 2015. I closed on the sale of my former home, as described above, six months to the day afterward: November 6, 2015.

May 6 is commonly expressed as 5/6 … 5+6=11 … 11/6.

Or to look at it from a slightly different angle, May 6 … 6 months … November 6.

The number, one might guess, of the beast we’ll consume on the one-year anniversary of our last meal.