synchronicity

How many synchronicities does one person experience in a month, in a year, and in a lifetime?… View More

I have great news to share in this blog post! The image above won the GRAND PRIZE in the New York Center for Photographic Art (NYC4PA) competition! You won’t believe it, but I was not going to submit to this competition. Thanks to synchronicity, I ended up submitting right at the deadline! Have you experienced synchronicities (“meaningful coincidences”) but ignored them because it’s too irrational and out there? Then you’re a synchronicity skeptic! For many years, I was skeptical of Jung’s idea too. But what if there are rational ways to justify the belief in synchronicity? You might be amazed at how mysterious your life is!… View More

I have some art news! My cyanotype artwork graced the catalog cover of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) based out of California State University! A big thank you to Ann Jastrab, Executive Director of the Center for Photographic Art, for recommending my work to OLLI.  This catalog is beautifully printed and features the cyanotype art of other artists like Christina Z. Anderson, Brenton Hamilton, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Robert Langham III, Emma Powell, and Brian Taylor. If you want to see amazing cyanotype work, download a pdf copy of the catalog. Also, why not sign up for a continuing education course? The classes will be through Zoom this fall, so anyone can join! Their offerings run the gamut of art, history, literature, writing, and current events. For the front cover, OLLI chose The Unremembered Gate—an image I created in 2012. Reflecting on this image, I realize I’ve changed a lot. For example, the way I approach choices now is more “grown-up” than before. In this article, I explain what I mean by recounting my journey and referencing the ideas of psychoanalyst Carl Jung. If you’re deciding between two jobs, two choices, or two life paths, I hope this article helps!… View More

Are Synchronicities Miracles?

“Indeed, they can be, but again only for those whose religious faith leads them to perceive the action of God in this particular episode of their lives. To call a coincidence a miracle is to place a religious interpretation on the event, but even after you have explained a synchronistic event of a miraculous cast in terms of ordinary causality, a popular pastime since the advent of modern socience—the Star of Bethlehem was an unusual conjunction of planets, the Israelites’ passage through the Red Sea was made possible through drought conditions and a freakish wind pattern that blew the shallow water aside—one still has to reckon with the subjective significance of the event for those who experienced it as a random but transformative event in their stories of who they are. For some, the word “miracle” fits best to describe this significance, for others, the description “synchronicity” allows for language that neither affirms a particular theological position nor dismisses the occurrence as nothing but unusual natural phenomena.” - Robert Hopcke, There Are No Accidents, p204-205

While talking to my Mom over FaceTime last week, I played Waltz in A Minor by Chopin, a piece I’ve been working on for the past month. I was starting and stopping every couple of beats. And finally I got to the end. “Why can’t you play it all the way through?”… View More

I’ve been thinking how I got back into piano after 35 years of not playing. I attribute it to synchronicity. I was getting lunch at the cafeteria at my day job, and I bumped into a colleague as I was waiting in line to pay. “Do you want to have lunch together?”… View More

Coincidences happen all the time in our lives. As I continue to read up on the topic of synchronicity, I’ve been wondering about this: why is it that some coincidences are synchronistic and some are not? I just finished reading a book entitled The Are No Accidents by Robert Hopcke. I started… View More

Last night, I dreamed that it was raining in my room. I stumbled to find the switch, and as the overhead light flickered on, I found that I was back in Waterloo, in a basement room that I had rented in a dilapidated house along University Avenue, circa 1992. This house was so run down that when it… View More

This past Saturday, I did an artist talk during my pop-up exhibition at the Baltimore Theatre Project. At the start of my talks, I always pose this question: Should I remain as an accountant or become an artist? Do you go this way or that way?… View More

I kept seeing David Hockney the past two weeks: first, in the Departures magazine cover for July/August; second, as I was hunting for a book to bring to the beach; and third, in a poster at a bed & breakfast place in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware! In honor of these coincidences, I decided to write… View More