coincidences

The recent weather has been throwing me off, I think. Today is pretty nice, nice enough for just a thin sweater. It would be a lot better if the wind wasn’t blowing the way it has been for a week now, or if the sun would just stay high in the middle of the sky. 

Speaking of the sky, I was walking to work earlier and I realized that I was just looking at the ground four feet in front of me. The sky today is blue, the kind of blue from a children’s book, with very few fluffy white clouds. The ones that you look at and think, wow, if I drew a cloud, it would look almost exactly like that. I love those kinds of clouds – they look like little cushions you could sit on if you were a giant. But I’m not a giant. I’m not even a cloud-watcher today. Instead, I’m a sidewalk-starer. 

Aside from the hazards that accompany looking down while walking, and the neck pain that starts after a while, staring at the sidewalk when I walk is kind of nice. The salt leftover from the snow and ice sparkles in the sunlight, kind of like you’re walking on a path of minerals (which I suppose you are since it’s salt) or something a little more magical. Another thing I noticed today as I was walking was a faded blob of chalk, in which I could faintly pick out blue and red and yellow and green – a rainbow that has lost its shape and the majority of its pigment. 

When I first came to school my freshman year, I began to see little chalk rainbows around campus during the first week or two of the semester. Every time I saw one, I felt joy. I was excited to see those lines of color, because to be so frank with you, I did not want to be at this school (sometimes I still don’t). Those little rainbows were small little flashes of life though. Those who were on my private story on Snapchat know this, since every time I saw one I would take a picture and put it on my story. I didn’t exactly know what the purpose was behind them at the time, but it made me feel good to see them. 

Flash forward to yesterday morning, when the rainbows appeared again. This time, it wasn’t sunny August/September. It was cold and dreary March. And this time, the rainbows didn’t stay for long. Phys plant washed them away, leaving blurs of color that could have just been the dried-up remnants of Superman ice cream that someone dropped the day before. I know now that these rainbows are a small and silent protest against a much larger issue on campus, so I feel a little like the March wind has blown straight through me when I see them being erased. 

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that I have been seeing little rainbows, even as they fade, or rather, are purposefully washed away. 

I have experienced a lot of coincidences recently, some more drastic than others. I’m not sure what my exact stance on coincidences is; the whole “once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern” thing makes sense, but I don’t put a ton of superstitious value in it. However, this pattern feels like some kind of confirmation that I’m where I need to be. 

I’m not sure how to articulate my thoughts on the rainbows, since there are a good many people who could potentially see this blog. However, I don’t think it’s a coincidence to see them recently. I know that there are larger factors than just my personal life, and that those factors are very important for those drawing these little semi-circles of color, but it feels like things are coming full circle as I near graduation in a couple of months. And it feels fitting that I finally understand why I’m seeing them on brick and concrete throughout campus.

I don’t think I’m saying this very well, because I’m trying to strike a balance. I’m not quite good at that, so I’m going to move on to the next coincidence. 

Last week, I went to a bookstore in Lexington and while I was searching for a specific book (with no specific title), I found a collection of 100 poems by the poet Seamus Heaney. If his name sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen the black cover of the edition of Beowulf that he translated. Anyways, I sat down on the wooden bench in the very small poetry section of Joseph-Beth and opened it up. The first poem was Digging, which I read in a gen-ed English class my freshman year. Same semester as the rainbows. The professor who gave it to us and made us study it left after my freshman year, but I loved her. I had her two semesters in a row, and she was one of the first people (professors) who sat down with me and helped me realize that I did not have to have everything in my life lined up at 18 years old. Dumb realization, but needed. When I began to consider transferring, and I had my foot out the door, she is the professor who wrote my recommendation letters for my applications. She didn’t limit me in any capacity, it was purely encouragement based on how she saw me and my strengths and weaknesses. 

So for a week, I was thinking about Digging and, in turn, her and my freshman year. Thursday, I was reading an email from one of my professors about having a guest lecturer the following day in class – Dr. Parker, the professor from freshman year. I haven’t seen her in three years, and honestly, haven’t thought about her more than a little bit every so often, and now she would be back in our small little college town to interview for the open position in the English department. 

Seeing her Friday and being able to talk and catch up a little was genuinely healing for the soul. It was also a reminder of how much time has passed since I first came to college. It makes me think of my sophomore year when I decided to stay here, of the moment where I came back from Fall Break early to sit on the old lacrosse field and watch the sunset and I just knew I had to stay. It makes me think of way I used to be silent in my major classes, listening to the upperclassmen or bolder underclassmen who sounded so articulate while they talked about the novel or poem that I didn’t understand in any capacity. Now, I like authors like Faulkner and I’m not afraid to voice my opinion to any of the professors in the department (for worse or for better). 

The simple coincidence of a poem and a guest lecturer was enough to make me think of three and a half years of sunsets at the field, trips to Cane’s with my old roommate, the first time my impressions of my school really changed, etc. etc. Not a coincidence, I think.

A smaller coincidence is that Dr. Parker mentioned that her love for her area of study began by reading Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poems. Just last week, I was swapping Hopkins poems with a friend and talking about his writing and the beauty of it all. Not a coincidence. 

Kind of the final coincidence to bring us on home is that last week, I ended up going to an orchestra concert on campus with one of my friends. We met in the middle of campus to walk to the concert hall, and as soon as we reached each other, the whole town experienced a blackout. Of course, the show must go on, so the orchestra band played the concert by the light of their music stands, and my friend and I sat there and took it all in. At a certain point, the conductor turned to the audience, not seeing our faces, and announced that the next song would be about grief and how the Holy Spirit moves in that. There was a longer spiel, but there was no coincidence about this. 

That day was the six-month mark since my childhood neighbor and friend had passed away. All day, I had been keeping myself busy and doing so much homework and reading to not think about it. But as the band played that song, and the violins cried out against the deep tones of the bass and the cello, tears ran down my face and my friend’s. You see, the following Friday was a significant date for her as well, and so we sat there in our tears and listened to the music in the dark. At the end of the concert, we sat and we talked for probably 30 minutes or so about grief and God and whatnot. Not a coincidence that we decided to go kind of last minute, or that there was a power outage, or that they played that song and the conductor said those words. 

Last January, I wrote about daffodils. I’m beginning to see narrow shoots of dark green come out of the ground in small patches when I’m out and about. The blooms haven’t shown themselves yet, but I’m thinking that I won’t notice them if I’m looking at the clouds too much. 

March is an interesting time of year, with midterms and fluctuating weather and also somehow everyone I know has a March birthday?? We’re only 8 days in, but I feel like it’s moving faster than the clouds on a windy day.

Try to strike a balance between the sidewalk and the clouds. Thanks for reading :)