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.