Picos Gemeos

Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the movie The NeverEnding Story, a boy accidentally ends up in a mysterious bookshop, where he borrows a book without the owner's knowledge. As he sits in an attic reading the book - which tells the story of a warrior on a quest in some fantastical land - he realises the book is aware of him, and speaking back to him.

My experience with this book was a little bit like that. My boyfriend gave it to me as a birthday gift because he knew I had an interest in synchronicity (or maybe the book "fell" on him in the bookstore? This is apparently a very popular "starting" point for synchronous events.) As I started reading it, a few topics discussed on its pages happened to be random topics I was already reading about elsewhere.

Robert Moss paints the world as a place filled with symbols that are waiting to speak back to us, if only we'll pay attention to them. Then, what we do with them, is a matter of how creative we want to get. Moss' style is conversational, very easy to read, and the book has plenty of exercises to activate synchronicity in your life.

I decided to play one of his games by asking my Spotify playlist a question and letting a randomly selected song give me the answer (or guide me, as Moss would say). The song that came up was Madonna's "Cherish", with lyrics which actually fit perfectly what I was asking. Just as I was listening to the song, going down Camden and paying attention to its lyrics, I walked past a young woman dressed like Madonna circa 1980s. From then onwards, other coincidences started to appear related to that song (mostly to do with the song's reference to Romeo and Juliet). I'm not really sure what it all means except, perhaps, that the universe has a sense of humor (or maybe it's just our own mind's comedic power when it focuses on something?)

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