Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Stranger in the City/Stranger than Fiction

Coincidences astound me. I live in Los Angeles where the population of the metropolitan area is something like 12 million. Yesterday at LAX I took the Flyaway bus and was on the same bus with a TSA officer who was also taking the bus to Union Station, I presume as part of his after work commute. I had a personal encounter with this officer some months earlier when he had to escort me back to the baggage counter after my bag failed the security check (expensive corkscew/knife combo.) Tonight I'm at the Central Library for a performance. He's here. I ask myself, am I imagining this? I study his rather distinctive earring from across the narrow lobby, and then hear him say to the woman he's with, "When I have five more years with the TSA...."


The day before yesterday I was able to chat with a friend at the Baltimore airport because we both happened to be there flying out to our respective cities on the same airline at approximately the same time.


photo credit: murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

I love this kind of thing. Have you ever read "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut? He makes up a word/concept called a karasse. Here's Wikipedia's definition of it: karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The people can be thought of as fingers in a Cat's Cradle.

I think of that when people come into my life over and over in random and often coincidental ways.

Elizabeth said...

By the way, I love the colors of your blog! Very festive --

Ms. Moon said...

I don't understand it but I know this does happen. Maybe Vonnegut had it right. One of the things that astounds me is how every time I hear about someone going to Paris, they run into someone they know or have known there.
Paris?
Why not?