The other night, I decided to go for a run at one in the morning - I headed west down Magnolia towards Lankershim, and turned right towards the subway station. I stretched for a while as I watched the last train leave for the night, then I decided to loop back and head home. At the corner of Magnolia of Lankershim, there's a Starbucks, and next to that (going back down Magnolia) is one of the many North Hollywood Art's District Theaters--

Here's the first part of my coincident: I decided to cut behind the Theatre, there's an alley way that runs parallel to Magnolia, just as I turned the corner a young guy with a cock-eyed baseball cap was turning the corner in the opposite direction, taking a deep hit off his cigarette - we weren't that close to each-other, we didn't almost hit, but we looked right at each-other in a strange way. Then that was it - he kept walking and I kept running down the alley towards Ralph's.

It's important to keep in mind that at this point I was heading straight home - and that this guy was walking in the opposite direction. So, it's probably been two or three minutes since my run in with the only other person walking the streets of North Hollywood at one in the morning... when just as I'm kicking-in the last quarter mile of my run, sprinting past all the apartments that hug the sidewalk in-between Ralph's and Cahuenga Blvd, the same guy wearing a cock-eyed baseball cap turns the corner out of an apartment complex, taking a deep hit off his cigarette, heading in the opposite direction. We both look right at each-other for a moment, but keep going. This was especially a strange experience because at that very moment I was thinking about 'coincidences'... I ran another forty feet and then stopped and turned around - the guy had also walked several yards down the sidewalk and stopped, and we both just stood there - eighty-some feet apart, no one else around, looking at each-other, both thinking how Deja Vu'ish that just was. But neither of us said anything, we just stood there for a moment before slowly going back to our business.


Maybe this wouldn't have messed with me so much if I hadn't just watched 'I heart Huckabees', a similar thing happens in the movie - which basically starts the whole plot of the film, the main character runs into the same guy several times and hires two existential detectives (Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, who is from Detriot... but that's besides the point) to find out what the coincidence means. As strange as that plot might sound, and it is, the movie is so amazing and funny and profound... I can't get enough of it. Our friend, Lorrie came over the other night to watch it with us and ever since then we've both been obsessed with the questions in the film - which are questions I've always found interesting, but they are questions we forget about in day-to-day "life".

One of my favorite quotes in the film is when Hoffman, Tomlin and Jude Law are having an important conversation, and Jude Law defensively says, "How am I not myself?" - and the two detectives just stop, as if this was the most important question anyone's ever off handily asked, and they just kept saying, "how am I not myself"? "How am I not myself"? "How are you not yourself"? "How am I not myself"? "How am I..."

I think if you're going to watch this movie, you should definitely also watch the film, "What the @%$! do we know", (click here to watch a trailer), it's all about quantum-physics, I think I've mentioned it on the site before, but all the same, it's an amazing movie - and it will leave you 'very confused' for a good-month, which, in this case, is a very good thing I think. Both films talk about so many things that we know so little about, and they are really mind-blowing. Like the fact that when you look close enough at a person, a coffee pot, the computer I'm writing this post on - in it's simplest form, it's all made of one thing: energy. When you look close enough, there is no distinction between you, or me, or the air in this apartment, or the airplane I hear outside right now... "everything is the same, even when it's different".

And that... to me, is such an important thing to remind yourself of every once in a while. And it's the just the tip of the iceberg - in "What the @%$! do we know", is talks about how we are all made of energy, and nothing is created or destroyed in the universe, everything is recycled, and we are all, therefore, connected - not even really "connected", that's a bad word because it implies that "two separate things are linked", and in reality everything is "one thing". But anyways, because everything is the same - an important question to ask is: how do I intentionally/ unintentionally effect someone or something else?

The most interested answer, is this study that was done in D.C., here's a clip:

This study presents the final results of a two-month prospective experiment to reduce violent crime in Washington, DC. On the basis of previous research it was hypothesized that the level of violent crime in the District of Columbia would drop significantly with the creation of a large group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation® and TM-Sidhi® programs to increase coherence and reduce stress in the District.

Analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, revealed that there was a highly significant decrease in HRA crimes associated with increases in the size of the group during the Demonstration Project. The maximum decrease was 23.3% when the size of the group was largest during the final week of the project. The statistical probability that this result could reflect chance variation in crime levels was less than 2 in 1 billion.

The police chief of D.C., prior to the study, publicly trash-talked the event, saying nothing short of a blizzard was going to dramatically effect the crime-level. After the study ended, and he saw the 23% drop, he was it's biggest advocate. It really makes you wonder how little we know about ourselves - how little we understand our influence on those around us. According to this - as crazy as it might sound - being in a good mood might save a total stranger's life.

But yeah, long story short, check out these two movies - they are great. Another favorite scene of mine in "Huckabees" is when Marky Mark and Jason Schwartzman are having diner with a very religious family who have taken a guy from Sudan into their home - the guy from Sudan happens to be the 'coincident' guy - and they all start arguing with each-other, the family gets furious at Marky Mark's character because he's saying they aren't good people since they use petroleum - but that's a whole different sub-story of the movie - but they say, "we took a Sudan refugee into our home"! And Marky Mark yells back, "Yes, but how did Sudan happen"? It's a great scene and a great example of people with big-hearts and good intentions, but closed-minds or maybe good people who aren't willing to ask hard questions. And it makes you wonder - how better of a world this be if those same big-hearted people asked themselves: what's better, taking one Sudan refugee into their home? Or standing up to our government (who heavily supports the dictatorships in Sudan in exchange for cheap petroleum), demanding that we stop supporting oppressive-dictatorships and in the end, freeing millions of Sudanese? It seems like such an obvious choice... but for whatever, it's not an easy one.

Well, I've rambled on long enough... time for me to go to bed. Goodnight.