California a Kaleidiscope of Cultures and Disconnects UPDATE

My bizarre adventures in the occult long ago woke me up to synchronicity, which Jung explained as an acausal connective principle based on coincidences. Or some such inexplicable trick of paranormal psychology. At any rate, in the seventies it would happen to me on a number of occasions. The other day an article written by John Leo concerning the fragmentation of student graduations at UCLA triggered the memory of the strangest of my coincidences.

UPDATE: I now do remember reading a book at that very time which built upon my Jungian interests, Arthur Koestler's epiphany The Roots of Coincidence which had spurred my interest tenfold---with this following event, I plunged much more enthusiastically into occult matters, visiting Lyon's premier astrologer and pursuing a few books in French, but I digress from the following absolutely true rendition of events as witnessed by two or three U.S. Embassy FSO's:

The date was May 3, 1973, and I was in Paris to help a female FSO friend in the Embassy there celebrate her 30th birthday. Everything that day started to turn up threes. Little things and bigger things. I bought an African musical instrument called a balaphon for 300 francs and then we went to the Parc de Luxembourg to lie on the grass on a perfect Spring day.

I recall telling my FSO friends about a book I was reading on Native American tribal differences. And how on the East Coast, vast tribal confederations had formed like the Five Nations and sophisticated trade and negotiating protocols had evolved even before the advent of the Europeans. Yadda yadda, but the same book had stressed how in California and parts of Oregon, the exact opposite phenomenon had occurred and the tribes had split again and again and tended to assert the fissiparous tendencies that isolates in language and tribes often do.

I had taken off my shoes a half-hour before and wiggled my toes while making a joke about how California then was like the weird hippies etc. of the counterculture today [in 1973]. I then digressed onto my little obsession-phase of the moment, coincidences and synchronicity.

I then went to put on my shoes and perhaps the weirdest of the many weird coincidences that have happened to me during a coincidence-filled lifetime occurred. In one of my shoes, a French banque cheque for 30,000 francs made out by a French gentleman named "Berger" which of course means "Shepherd" was stuck. How it had arrived in my shoe, which was lying less than three feet away as we lay on a blanket in the gorgeous confines of the Luxembourg Gardens is a perfect mystery.

John Leo's article linked above suddenly reminded me of the coincidence, as California is still demonstrating the multipolarity of its kaleidoscopic various factions who are refusing to assimilate to America or any known new synthesis. A perfect stew of special interests.

At the time, we talked for a few minutes joking about it's being a birthday present to my FSO friend who should share it in flying us all to Tahiti [at the time the check was worth about $9000 US], but of course I did the right thing and tore it up.

May 3,1973 was certainly a day for threes!

One for Ripley's Believe it or Not!