"I'm Walking Here!"

I just stopped the movie I was watching to write this one up. I had to.

Today, I was in Times Square shooting video of traffic and pedestrian conditions from the 17th floor of One Times Square - that's the building the ball drops from on New Years.

Anyway, I was there with a squad from the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) who was also shooting video. One PPS guy was talking about my work and he said I should consider incorporating the scene from "Midnight Cowboy" (1969) where Dustin Hoffman is nearly hit by a cab and exhalts that famous quote, "I'm walkin' here!" This chap also went on to tell me that the scene in the film was ad-libbed, the cab wasn't supposed to be on that street.

Fast forward: tonight, I am watching the awful Bruce Campbell-directed flick, "Man With A Screaming Brain" (2005.) Just 11 minutes in, some force compels me to sign onto IMDB to check out "Midnight Cowboy" and to check under the trivia section to confirm the tale from today.

He was wrong. It was written that way. But that isn't important right now cause I look up from the computer and a cab in the movie I am watching nearly strikes a Bulgarian woman and she blurts out in her native tongue Hoffman-style, "I'm walkin' here!"

More Cross-Country Symmetry

Here is just a series of insane connections.

I'm doing a documentary project on the never built Mt. Hood Freeway in Oregon. There's almost no information about it anywhere on the web save this this nice entry in Wikipedia.

One of the folks I interviewed in Portland urged me to contact a guy named Blaine, who did his senior design thesis on the Mt. Hood Freeway. In his research, he unearthed tons of old documents I might be able to use. He recently moved to Berkeley! "Cool," I figured I could interview him the next time I visited the Bay Area to be with Elizabeth.

I call when I get back to Brooklyn. What luck! He happens to be in Brooklyn and he has his laptop which still has the documents on it!

Great! It gets greater.

Blaine also happens to be a member of the Rebar Group who did this great installation showing how to reclaim a parking space back for open green space. Transportation Alternatives was planning on doing something similar called Parking Spot Squat so I interviewed him about Mount Hood and that, two stories for one!

Even better! It gets betterer.

A few weeks later, I email Blaine to tell him that I am heading to the Bay Area to do a similar highway piece on the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and I ask if there is anyone he can recommend I interview. He says his close friend Suzhana is great pals with a Mr. Jacobs who would be considered the Bay Area's expert to talk with and if I send an email to him he would forward it to her to send on to this gentleman.

Moments later, I get a wonderful email back from this Suzhana elated to hear from me. You see Suzhana is Suzie (to me!), a gal I volunteered and hung out with at Transportation Alternatives in NYC many, many years back. The last I had heard from her was by email about a year ago and she was working in a European country which had just undergone a government overthrow. Rioting in the streets.

Scary stuff. Almost as scary as some of these coincidences I run into.

"Sweetness"

Been a while. I have lots of good stuff to post up I have saved over the past few weeks. Here is a good one to start off..



Yup, that's my photo at the top of page 17 in Friday, April 21st Metro edition - the free Metro Newspaper they hand out at subway stations! "Ear Check" is a regular feature they run.

I recently added (and re-discovered) the song "Sweetness" (by Jimmy Eat World) and put it in my iPod. I had already listened to it a half dozen times that day saying to myself, "Everyone should really hear this song, it's awesome"....and then suddenly an energetic college-aged girl with a camera and notepad bolts right up to me on the street, stops me and asks me what I am listening to.

I had forgotten about it until today when a friend emailed and said...

"That wasn't you in the Metro, Friday was it? I just previewed that song on iTunes. It's a good song."

Well, I got at least one person to listen. By the way, I really like this cause it says on the page: Clarence Eckerson, 39, Videographer. Now I'm a famous filmmaker.

On the heels of yesterday's post...

This morning I met with up with a potential assistant to help with some of my video work at TOPP. While on the street, I felt a remarkable pulse to eat at this place called the Bagel Maven Cafe on 30th Street & 7th Avenue.

Got an egg & cheese and sat down. I noticed above me was a print framed on the wall, a very unique style I was familiar with.

Yup, another remarkable coincidence. If you read my previous post this is another cool collage by Michael Albert the guy I met on the street a few days ago!

The young gentleman I was interviewing sensed I was obviously distracted by the coincidence. I told him to read my blog and he'd understand. 'Nuff said.

Today is World π Day!

So I was walking around the streets of NYC this weekend, contemplating this entry.

You see, today is World π Day! π is that number from high school math that starts with 3.14159 and is usually followed by an ellipsis. In this case, an ellipsis means "it keeps going" and is represented by these next three periods...

I recently learned of this π Day thing. On March 14th at 1:59 AM you are as close to π you can get. How to celebrate? Maybe one should watch the movie π while eating some pie. Don't laugh, I'll bet geeks all over the world are having parties like this!

π is another mysterious number of the universe which mightly intrigues me. π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The number is invaluable in geometry, physics and engineering and yet it is an irrational number. It goes on forever - the exact end cannot be calculated. Supercomputers have failed to identify a pattern after factoring well over a trillion digits. 3.14159 works just fine for math mavens and architects, but it's really short for this:


Which brings me back to walking around NYC this weekend. My path crossed with a great guy named Michael Albert who was generously giving away prints of his artwork to hordes of passersby on the street. The prices as he put it, "One print is free, a second print is $20." Nice prints, fun pop collages.

The one print I selected above was his representation of π.

During our brief π conversation, he told met his wife on March 14th which made the date more special. A flash then went off in my head and I thought, "No it can't be!" When I got home I checked: last year on March 14th at 1:59 AM EST I was getting off a plane in Portland on the trip I would meet my current squeeze Elizabeth on. And no lie - that was the EXACT landing time.

The Town of Clarence

The Town of Clarence is in upstate New York. It's actually three small towns: Clarence, East Clarence and Clarence Center. I know you don't care, but there you go.

My former wife Sharon and I went on a driving vacation of Western New York a few years ago, and on my agenda was getting to visit Clarence, which I had seen on a map as a child nearly 30 years ago and always wanted to visit. Yes, I am not lying, this was going to be exciting (for me!) as I envisoned myself taking photos next to everything Clarence. There's Clarence at the Clarence Bowling Alley. (Snap!) Clarence at the Clarence Shopping Center. (Snap!) Clarence at the Clarence Massage Parlor. (Snap!) You know, stupid kinda stuff.

Well, there really wasn't too much in Clarence. But there were some cosmic occurences.

I discovered a few miles away an Eckerson Street, my last name! The first and last Eckerson Street I have ever encountered. Explain that one!

It continued at the Clarence Deli. I picked up the local paper. It's called the Clarence Bee for crissakes! "B" or "Bee" has been my nickname since I was a tyke!! It's short for B.J. (or Bucky Jr.) Another odd coincidence and (Snap!) Sharon took that photo you see with me smiling with glee and Clarence Bee in hand.


Just then a van pulled into the parking lot. On the side it said B.J.'s Plumbing!! We looked at each other with one of those okay-what-the-hell-is-going-on? glances and quickly left Clarence. But we didn't leave me behind, just the town.

Items...

From time to time, I will espouse recent items of remarkable content...

Early last year I was dating a woman. She made me a music CD. One of the songs was "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" by Bill Withers. I had never heard this song before. Or of him.

Next day I walk into a store to shop - song is on the radio. Later, I walk into Tower Records and there is a endcap featuring a big photo of him and his music on sale. That night met some friends at a club where they took very old concert/music posters, laminated them and used them under glass as cool dinner tables. Sat down and YUP! staring at me all night is Mr. Wither's mug.

* * *

Elizabeth was flying in to JFK a few months ago. I was late so we agreed to meet halfway out on the subway. She was not feeling well because her monthly woman cycle was about to arrive. I called her at an elevated train stop and asked comically if, "the red-dot had arrived yet?" We laughed. I hung up. Turned around and this flyer was staring me right in the face.

Spooky.

Jungian synchronicity

After reading my post on the Fibonacci Series , my friend Matt responded that these coincidences I was experiencing were "purely Jungian synchronicity on perhaps a larger level." Not having read Jung since college, and not familiar with this synchronicity (notice: so very close to symmetry!) I did a few hours of web research.

Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who believed there was a link between the mind, the world of perception, and seemingly unconnected events. He believed that coincidence in life's events are meaningful, filled with signs and connected to the world as a whole. That it's all interrelated, that the universe has a sort of collective unconscious driven by our combined psychic energy.

The example often cited in the literature is a story in which a patient of Jung's was recounting a dream about being given a golden scarab (beetle). Just then appeared a flying beetle at the window which he let in and caught in the air. This coincidence was not lost on Jung.

Here is what I feel is a fair assessment of Jung and related theories, written in prose far greater than I am capable. But predictably, Jung's theory has been debunked to death, in many cases I think a bit too harshly.

Invoked often is apophenia as an explanation to conicidence. Apophenia is basically causality made up "in our minds." In other words, inventing connections between two events when there is none. In any event, I buy most of what Jung says, though let me play the devil's advocate a moment.

There are well over 6 million people on "God's Green Earth". Certainly, a measurable fraction of them encounter lots of daily oddities as I do; some must have extraordinary feats of coincidence. That given, probability predicts an equal number of people who rarely or never experience much coincidence; some who feel assigning a theory to causality to be sheer lunacy. Detractors state there is no scientific evidence for Jung's theories.

Yet a majority of Americans are devoutly religious. There is zero "evidence" that God exists. "Fact" is largely devoid in religion. But believers note their "calling" or a "feeling of a Higher power" inside of them. Loyalty to an unproven ideal. Faith.

I assert that Jung's theories are similar. Nope, I can't yet point to any facts to back me up. But there is a sense inside of me, that the world moves in patterns and that we are individually and collectively contributing. That's faith too.

I also posit this: that those who do not experience ironies just aren't aware of it, or are just ignorant. I think once you are enlightened to the possibilities, once enrolled, you will see them as well.

Just don't drink the Kool Aid.

JetBlue Symmetry

I love flying JetBlue. Best airline ever. Commercial over. Let's talk about last night.

I had just landed at JFK on the 750 PM from Oakland, when this gal - whose face radiated with bucket loads of sunshine - approached me rather forwardly in the terminal and asked, "Hey, wanna split a cab to Manhattan?" I replied, "Sorry I'm a Brooklyn boy, gonna catch the Airtrain."

She paused momentarily, "May I join you?"

"Well, it's a free country!"

(Okay, I really didn't say that, I sensed she had never done the Airtrain/subway thing before so I agreed to show her the ropes.)

To truncate a one hour conversation that followed: Her name was Anna. She was on the same JetBlue flight. She's also dating someone in the Bay Area. 8 months going on 9. (Our "anniversary dates" are three days apart.) She is 27, same age as Elizabeth. Her guy is almost my age. They also both met in a city that neither live in right now.

Her birthday is in March. Mine too! Her boyfriend's b-day is in April. So is Elizabeth's! They plan visits about a month in advance to save $$$, are members of TrueBlue, JetBlue's great frequent flyer program, and she's earned two free flights. Ditto here. They have the same cell service, plan inventive phone dates, and send each other fun items in the mail. They each are in a life situation that allows them to pursue this relationship (he's an entrepreneur, she sells real estate by phone.)

There's more, but I sense you get the gist.

That's a boatload of similarities. But truthfully, it didn't hit me at first cause I was just enjoying sharing a pleasant conversation with someone leading a life symmetry. We shared similar travel stories, exchanged great phone date ideas, and offered advice and encouragement. It was comforting.

Funny, you may never know how much alike your fellow traveler on a plane is. Or that guy in front of you at the supermarket. Or the woman in the car who almost hit you while you were riding your bicycle.

I believe these similarities are naturally occurring and then cajoled our way by the universe's flow, all the time, every day. If you are in tune, if you are aware, you pick up on them. Make no mistake, there is a higher order based on mathematics and symmetry and fate. That's religion to me.

Oh, and about her name being Anna. That's a palindrome, something else I marvel about. But I'll save that for a future post.

The Fibonacci Series - the pattern of our lives?

I'm endlessly fascinated by numbers and formulas that seem to imply patterns and cycles to our everyday lives. Numbers that hint - to me at least - that there is something going on. That nature just might be in more control than we believe. And so I find The Fibonacci Series one cool cadre of numbers.

You may recall learning about them. The Fibonacci Series starts like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. etc. If you haven't already figured it out, if you add any two adjacent numbers, the succeeding one is the sum of those two. How nifty.

Then it gets cooler: you can use The FibS to plot something called The Fibonacci Spiral using the ratio of two adjacent FibS numbers. Referred to as the Golden Ratio.

If you need more help visualizing, this fun animation should help out.

Many scientists and believers note this pattern turns up all over in nature and is the basis for architecture and tons more. I think if nature puts this spiral in sunflowers, seashells, daises, pine cones and fruit (here), then there is no reason this cannot manifest itself in our daily lives. Our feelings. The choices we make. Who we visit. When and where we go. What we notice and say.

It could be that we are constantly wandering through endless layers of FibS spirals and interacting with other people drawn into them. Or it could be that we human masses are tapped into some kinetic energy and we create these collectively, albeit unconsciously. And this is why some people experience so much coincidence, chance, and irony.

One of my favorite movies, π (1998), took on the Golden Spiral and other mathematical theories applied in the stock market and The Torah. When I saw π, it immediately hit a node within me; for the first time I felt my first real true religious experience.

There is a handful of other films that have done this to me: Primer (2004), Cube (1997) and of course Donnie Darko (2001). And let me add in while reading many of Michael Crichton's science-leaden books, especially Jurassic Park which brought Chaos Theory to the hoi polloi.

I'll get to exploring all of this wonderful stuff in the future. but for now here is a painting I did of a purple Fibonacci Spiral. The dimensions are not exact, I used a little artistic license. :)

Cibo Matto 2X

Just a quick note on another dual freaky thing, the kinds of things that happen to me regularly.

For Valentine's Day, Elizabeth bought me a cool DVD compilation of a music video director named Michel Gondry. I'd never heard of him. He delights in making shorts that are visual gee-whiz masterpieces - some that are just one long continuous un-edited shot (or so he makes you believe!)

Anyway, late last night we watched a superb video he did for Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water". It was memserizing - a split-screen with two individual long shots that run about 4 minutes each, filled with all sorts of visual palindromes, backwards action, and ironic time juxtapositions - stuff right up my alley.

Before that I had never heard of Cibo Matto. I have no idea how popular they are with the kids, but it was my first exposure to them.

Upon waking this morning and checking email, the first was from my boss Mark with a link to a mini doc he saw on the net about music "sampling" piracy. As I am watching it, I see a woman being interviewed that looks suspiciously like "that gal in the video." I notice that when her name is flashed on-screen, yup, she is the lead singer for Cibo Matto.

24 years later...

That thing I am cradling there is a hand-held video game from 1982 called Galaxian. (It still works!) I have probably only touched or seen it maybe two or three times in the past, say, 23, 24 years. Recently while cleaning out and consolidating my apartment I found this packed deep in a box and it intrigued me, so I put some batteries in it and brought it out of hibernation.

A few days later I rented the movie "Doom". As the movie began I was intrigued by my cute, childhood video game there on the coffee table and started to play a round. What happened next was ultra-spooky. After a moment I hear the noises of the game suddenly become a little louder and I look up at the tv: one of the soldiers in "Doom" is playing with - yes - the very same game I had in my hands, Galaxian!

My jaw just dropped.

What are the chances? Like I said, haven't seen this thing for eons. Just did an ebay search - nothing. And it was certainly not as popular as a rubix cube or pet rock. Yet a writer, director, or somebody on a movie set remembered it and put it in a movie as an obscure pop culture reference. An attribution very, very few people would get, nevermind somebody playing with it nearly 24 years later.

Synergy.

$$$ and $ense

I've wanted to ask for a raise for some time. As a videographer I've been doing a swell job producing videos for the benefit of humankind at a new non-profit called The Open Planning Project. Check out some of the video and you'll get a gist what it is all about.

We'd just had a successful debut at The Urban Center. After the event, the party continued as a cadre of folks from Transportation Alternatives and the Project for Public Spaces joined us celebrating at the "W" hotel.

I had only had one drink at the event because I was shooting video, but made up fast at the after party. I went downstairs to get another beer when my boss Mark decided to accompany me. On the trip to the bar (was it the success of the event? the fact that I was a little inebriated?) I decided I would ask him right there for that raise.

I didn't get the chance. He turned to me after placing an order for a round and stated nonchalantly, "By the way Clarence, we're giving you a raise."

Whoa! A good thing, YES! But reflecting further on that moment trying to understand it more.

Did I sense the connection in the air? Were there other factors that were obvious? Or was it just the right time? As you know, I am a firm believer in symmetry in the air, that continum that constantly surrounds our lives that guides us.

Did I Break the projector?

So I have had this just-about-to-expire Loews movie pass in my wallet for the past month. I have been trying to use it (after all it is worth $10-plus in Manhattan) but a busy schedule, proximity, and movies-I-want-to-see just haven't been in sync. Today was the final valid day, and I decided to squeeze "Brokeback Mountain" in, even though I didn't really have time to spend nearly 3 hours at the movies. In fact, I was feeling very distressed and crunched for time when I ambled up to the ticket lady at Lowes 34th Street and asked...

"This pass expires today, is there any way to extend it?"

"Sorry, use it or lose it," she said, with a touch of snooty flair.

"Then one for 'Brokeback', 12:50," I replied.

I sit down while the final previews play out. I check the time. Then again. Ugh, am I really gonna have the time to watch this, get back to Brooklyn, workout, lug some video supplies home, buy groceries, and then get home with enough time to get in about six hours of needed work - all on less than five hours of sleep? The answer is no. I really want to see this movie, but not today, I am only here because I am saving $10. But is this worth the mental toil? I wish I could re-plan the day.

"Brokeback Mountain" starts. Opening credits roll. It's 1963. Heath Ledger steps out of a truck. Jake Gyllenhaal pulls up in a jalopy. The two exchange glances. Then BAM! (Read on kids, it's not what you think.) BAM! The film has stopped! Projector bulb goes out! We are sitting in the dark for a few minutes. Then an usher walks in to tell us both the projector and film have had a massive failure. Three minutes in, the movie has stopped!

The usher hands us each a pass good for another four months, everyone is pretty pissed. But I couldn't be happier.

Cross Country Connection 2.0

If you read yesterday's post, I have something more to add that is almost equally astounding. Another connection involving the four people in the photo above.

While Elizabeth was visiting, she found out that her ex-boyfriend Andy from Portland was in town. Well, not only in town but is also seeing someone, yes, of course from Brooklyn(!) - and as fate has it actually lives just ten blocks away from me in my neighborhood!

Just think of it this way: say right now you are dating someone pretty seriously for a little over a year. What if a little bird landed on your shoulder and said the two of you would be breaking up in a year and then added that you'd both be flying coast-to-coast involved in good long term relationships with two people who live blocks from each other?

You'd probably tell that bird it was looney tunes.

Anyway, it was an interesting dinner the four of us had. Fun, nice, interesting, and - to me - filled with the energy of the world that I am sitting back and enjoying being mesmerized by.

Luquer Street

That has been my address in Brooklyn since 1991. In that time, people have come and gone in my building. But the fourth floor family of Buzz, Patti and their young daughter Anne have always been a fixture. And this is where the coincidence of all conicidences got me started writing this blog.

My girlfriend Elizabeth was visiting from Berkeley for a few weeks over Winter break. We were out shooting some silly video and came home and ran into Anne (I have only seen Anne maybe once or twice in the last five years since she moved to go to school.)

We exchanged pleasantries on the steps. To keep the story simple - we find out that Anne is now a massage therapist and while in college at Colorado she went to the same school as Elizabeth's best friend Amber. E asks A, if she knows her. "Amber is one of my best friends," she replies.

Small world. Here we have two people standing between me on the same block in Brooklyn who both have the same very close pal and I am the connector.

But wait, the story gets even better. We get upstairs. Elizabeth recalls four years ago when she got a massage while visiting Colorado. Who gave her the massage? Anne. But Anne had dreadlocks at that time so Elizabeth didn't recognize her downstairs with short hair.

The odds are just too incredible to really fathom this. So instead of holding in all of these coincidences, I've decided to chronicle them, for your pleasure, for my sanity, for the good of Humankind. And to finally have a trail to see where it all leads.

Fate, Chance, Six Degrees (or less...)

I believe there is a real metaphysical current to our existence. That there is a force out there that envelopes all of us and produces particles of energy. I like to think of it as a jet stream constantly ebbing and flowing that we can all tap into.

There might be many names for it. You can call it conicidence, irony, fate, chance, deja vu, luck, being psychic, or encountering "Six Degrees" of separation, but to me it is all in the same realm of something I'd like to coin simply as "symmetry".

This symmetry has captivated me my whole life. Sometimes scared or shocked me, other times made me chuckle or shake my head in amusement. It is this symmetry that I denied for most of my younger years, then grudgingly acknowledged in my twenties, and now at 38, I fully accept and intend to nurture thru this blog.

We have all had some measure of these type of expeirences: being in the right place at the right time or knowing someone who knows someone who knows Kevin Bacon, but for me I encounter oddites like these on an almost daily basis. Some of my items may not be quite that far-fetched or odd to you, but as a collection I offer this as proof there is an irrefutable energy to the universe.

A few days ago, I had another major coincidence (see my next post), even more outlandish than my usual ones, and so I told it to many friends. One of my neighbor's jaw dropped, then quipped I was a "connector", a term I have been labeled many times by people in sundry circles. This was the "final straw", and so I finally decided since blogging has become such a force, I would start chronicling some of these tales.

And so I begin...