I'm not superstitious. Not really actually superstitious, though I do toss spilled salt over my shoulder, knock on wood, and leave the theatre when I accidentally say Macbeth.... whats the harm? Its fun taking part in traditions, and tried and true superstitions are fun. They are part of a larger mythology, a collective mythology that brings people together. Like loving Doctor Who or singing the Fresh Prince theme-song in a foreign land, some things just make you feel like a part of the universe, they stick with you that way.
However there's a different kind of superstition that I do find incredibly intriguing: the superstition of coincidence.
Now I don't take this too seriously- I don't plan my life around whether or not a light turns green or if I hear a certain song on the radio, but I do enjoy having my own little set of coincidences (at least partially self manufactured, I'm sure) that work together to make the world seem like an ever so slightly more magical place. Nothing has this effect more than re-discovering a long-forgotten personal mythology and suddenly seeing it everywhere. My latest is Eli.
Eli's Coming. Yes from the Three Dog Night song, but for me from Sports Night. Its one of those phrases that seeped into my brain and was something I said long after I remembered where it had come from.
Dan Rydell: Eli is something bad, a darkness.
Casey McCall: "Eli's coming. Hide your heart, girl." Eli is a inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
Dan Rydell: I know I'm getting the song wrong. But, when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.
The wind is blowing in from from the west, Eli's Coming. The birds are sitting on the wire, Eli's Coming. Your pets are acting weird, Eli's Coming. General strangeness with a side-order of odd, Eli's Coming. Its thunderstorms and stroppy moods, stubbing your toe and thinking fuzzy. Its tornadoes at the drive-in. Its nine different kinds of weather in a day. Its Eli.
Eli may have started out as a darkness, but over the years its become for me more about the feeling of impending Big Change. An epic shift in mood or weather or perspective or or or just... life.
On the last-day-of-my-twenties Eli was everywhere. In the wind, in the snow (in April!), in the radio, in the sneezing cats, even in friends being cavity searched at the border (I think that one was the weirdest). Eli. Marking the day as one preceding change. A day to remember.
So I went with it, I absorbed all the weirdness and enjoyed every second of it. I talked a lot and listened a lot and laughed a lot and drew and drank and decided to get a tattoo. One I had been planning for a long time (a story for another post), but one I had been putting off for equally as long for a million incredibly common and suddenly not-good-enough reasons. K has a few tattoos, and I talked to her and decided I would go visit her and get it done by her friend. Now I was already really sure about this tattoo, but of course I was a little anxious about the placement and the exactly what it was too look like and, I'll admit it, the pain... then K says "Oh it'll be fine, she's really really good. And by her I mean my tattoo artist friend. Eli."
Yep, Eli. Eli the tattoo Artist. Eli the tattoo Artist who is going to do the tattoo that I decided to get on the last-day-of-my-twenties, my Eli day. Even if that doesn't mean is was meant to be, its still pretty frickin' weird, and that enough for me!
So every time big change is on the horizon, every time there's a day full of coincidence, every time there's a storm, or a feeling, or a shift in the wind, despite what anyone tries to tell me, I know its Eli.
Sometimes things stick with you that way.
-E
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