(Below is the email in which I wrote about the teapot coincidence for the very first time – to Megh, a former member of the Atheist student group that I’d been President of in college, and whom I’d recently and randomly reconnected with online.
… I am interested in the topic of … and I hate to say this, more than you can ever know – especially after putting “The Celestine Prophecy” on my eternal Black List of Books that Prove Humanity is Retarded … synchronicity.
That was the first time I’ve dared type the word, all smacking of self-fulfilling pattern-seeking, an irrational foundation unpon which all manner of delusional edifices are constructed. Synchronicity.
Anwyay, the guy who lives in my basement has this older girlfriend, a sort of hippie chick who went to Berkeley, now she’s finishing up med school. The other day, after discussing the Teapot – we’ll get to that soon, I’m working on it – and she looks me in the eye and simply says: “Yes, I’ve noticed a swirl of synchronicity around you.”
Huh. A Swirl of Synchronicity. S.O.S.
She said this after hearing about the Teapot. And that’s what I’m writing to you about today. This is the first time I’ve tried putting any of this down into words, so it should be interesting.—
Some context on the way to the point:
So as you know I’m the guy who has styled one part of his outward persona into “Max Action,” Urban Explorer. And it is built on a lifetime of loving caves, tunnels, rooftops, basements – spaces between, spaces forgotten, spaces forbidden. Since I can remember anything, it’s been a love – and may or may not serve as a metaphor for my mental activities and preferences and motivations as well, but that’s another ramble – anyway.
I have lived in the house I now live in for 8 years, and it has been around since 1911.
Just context.
After renting it for 8 years, I bought the house earlier this month.
A day after I signed the paperwork, I felt compelled to explore the crawlspace – a space under the stairs that go down to the basement. There’s a board covering up the entrance, with no handle, and you have to pull the board out.
Nothing too hard to deal with – but – and to me, this is one of the Weird Things involved – in 8 years of living here, 8 years of Action Squadding – I have never, ever been into the crawlspace, in my own house.
I’ve never looked into it. It’s been under my nose all this time, and I’ve never had the curiosity, even once, to pull it open and see what is in there.
But now, suddenly, it was time. So I got the super suction-cup window-worker tool I liberated from Foshay Tower when I worked downtown, and used it to pull the board out of its frame. Inside, it was about what I’d expected – plastic over dirt floor, a million cobwebs, two dead mice, 3 old shoes, 1 rusted can.
I had purchased a dust mask just for this occasion, so I strapped it on, grabbed a flashlight, and crawled in.
And I felt something under the plastic, embedded in the dirt.
With a little effort, I was able to get my arm under the plastic, get hold of the mysterious buried object, and pull it out into the light.
It was a Teapot – white-crusted aluminum, handle long since rotted away, and looking at it, I felt something in brain shift, only a slight shift, but deep.
A shift with far-flung implications, easy to make but perhaps not possible to ever shift back from.
But more context is required.
—
Flashback to January – it was a mystical experience I had while hiking in Point Reyes National Seashore on LSD that really knocked me for a existential loop, leaving me reeling about pleasantly, believing in magic for the next few days.
experiencing the Oneness of all things - Tomales Point CA
I was in a strange period of openness after this. The magical thinking was lingering on long after the drug had faded. I was on a roll of following some strange intuition, a voice that pulled me where it seemed I needed to go. I felt in control of my life in a way I never had before – by letting go of reason and deliberation, silencing the mental chatter, and just – doing.
And it worked. My house transformed from an intractably cluttered, dark, dusty space to a open, light, clean space almost effortlessly, and in doing so seemed to mirror the transformations going on elsewhere in my mind and life. I won’t go too much into that, but let’s say it was a fertile time for change – and I’d even say positive change. Good things.
Somewhere in that period, in the same couple of day period in which I also decided to email you after randoming into your website, I went to Unique Thrift store.
By the end of the trip through the store, the cart was filled with stuff, as is usual – I put in anything I like on the way through, and then jettison that which does not still appeal before checking out.
As my 3 friends and I sorted through the cart, we set up a nice display of the collection we’d deliberately amassed of “inanimate objects represented with faces” on a shelf, and determined what of the rest of it we actually wanted to buy. Many things were discarded, but I could not bring myself to get rid of one specific item, yet found myself struggling aloud to justify why I felt so compelled to buy it.
But I was on this post-Point Reyes magical thinking kick, and I believed in letting myself be guided – by instinct, by magic, by whatever the hell it is.
“I don’t know – there’s just something satisfying about it – I like the materials, the construction – the connotations are somehow pleasant. I don’t know. I just feel like I want this in my house. I don’t drink tea much now, but maybe I’ll start.”
Yes, of course the object was a teapot.
I’d seen it from halfway across the store on a top shelf, and been drawn to it, even though I don’t usually shop from the housewares section, and have never considered myself to be the kind of person who owns – let alone one who buys – a teapot. The tea I have drank has been the instant kind – and this was an old-school teapot, made for loose tea leaves.
So I bought it, still trying to explain why to my friends and, mainly, to myself.
This was one to three days before my expedition into the crawlspace.
I took the teapot home, and tried to make sense of it – brewed some instant tea packs in it.
The tea wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special, either.
A couple days later, I bought my house.
That very night, I decided to explore the crawlspace.
And you know this part – I found a second teapot in there – buried beneath this house that I have known since I was a baby, in which I have lived for the last 8 years.
teapot wtf
And the teapot I found buried under my house was identical to the teapot I’d brought home from the store a few days earlier.
Same size.
Same materials.
Same design.
Same hinges.
Same spout.
The same teapot.
synchroniciteapots
Sure, there were some differences, but not enough. The store teapot still had a handle. The house teapot still had the little ball on a chain on top. The only real difference was the stamped brand on the bottom of each teapot. Different-named companies, sure – but using the same mold, the same design, to make the same teapot.
Later, a friend would take the bottom half of the tea leaf container inside of the store teapot, and screw it into the top half of the house teapot. It fit perfectly.
Of course.
The two teapots now sit together in my living room, their spouts together over a green stone I took home from Point Reyes – some kind of altar to magic, to synchronicity.
I don’t pretend to know what they “mean.” I attach no theories, no belief systems, no things I want to believe.
I don’t need to know.
But I’m glad I have them – to remind me.
There are things strange and beautiful in this world, mysterious things that cannot be held in any worldview, comprehended by any human mind.
Once, this would have bothered me.
Now, it makes me happy.
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