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| A knight with a lance that I saw in a magic bookshop last night after a book talk |
Never Be Cool?
But the bizarre thing was last night after walking back to my car I looked into another favourite bookstore of mine to see a new item in the window that wasn't there the last time I passed the store.
A knight's amour, including a lance.
After seeing the news this morning of the death of former Shark Lance Thompson maybe it was a bad omen in a way I couldn't imagine?
UPDATE:
Before Lance was a Sharks player he was probably more famous in the red and white of the Dragons.
I went to hear a talk by Brisbane author David Cohen and to get my book signed while I was there.
I even managed to get a copy of David's novel 'Disappearing Off the Face of the Earth'.
I wrote about buying my copy of 'The Hunter' when I was down in Byron Bay and the synchronicities that I had while reading it in this recent post -
What Are We Going to Do About the Ibis?
Normally I get my books signed to Daz, but since the guy in one of David's short stories is named Darren, I thought I'd ask David to sign both books to Darren.
Funny thing was the guy right in front of me in the line was also named Darren and he was talking to David about the Darren on the bus in the short story and I leaned in and said most guys named Darren are weirdos then quickly let him know that my name was Darren too before I lost some teeth.
Now thinking back to looking in the magic bookstore window gives me goosebumps seeing that knight with the lance, plus all those books about spirits.
I hope the Sharks can win that game on Sunday and dedicate it to Lance's memory.
My old mate Gordon White from 'Rune Soup' has his book on the shelves of this store with the knight in the front window I noticed last time I was browsing in here.
And while Gordon now lives in Tasmania he is a Newcastle boy.
A Magical Drive in Tasmania with Gordon White from Rune Soup?
I listened to Gordon's latest podcast about cold water and Ursula Le Guin yesterday morning and Thursday night found these Le Guin books on the shelf at the Avid Reader bookstore pictured below.
All that talk about cold water surf in Gordon's podcast reminded me of the short story from 'The Hunter' called 'Washing Day' where a group of lonely old single blokes make their own magic using their "wands" and imagination, you might say;-)
And the reason I decided to buy Matt Haig's book the same day that I bought 'The Hunter' down in Byron Bay was because I saw the chapter 'Invisible Sharks' in 'Notes on a Nervous Planet'.
Anxiety, Crossing Our Bridges When We Come to Them and a Plate of Shrimp?
And GO THE SHARKIES on Sunday.
UPDATE: August 25th, 2018
The new Prime minister of Australia is a Sharks supporter and while I'm more inclined not to vote for his political party I'm glad that in other ways that we are both on the same team;-)
But along with the admiration, there was also indifference, scepticism and disgust
It's actually quite ironic that the Australian Prime-minster is from Cronulla - Sutherland now, as for the last few decades before the club took out its first NRL Grand Final the ongoing joke in the NRL (apart for the refereeing;-) was that waiting for the Sharks to win a grand final was like leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt, who was the 17th Prime-minster of Australia when he went for a swim at the beach and never returned, presumed drowned or taken by a shark.
UPDATE: August 26th, 2018
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| Lance Thompson |
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| David Cohen being interviewed by Phil Brown last night |
What Are We Going to Do About the Ibis?
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| David Cohen at the signing table last night |
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| The front window of the Ecclectica bookstore last night |
My old mate Gordon White from 'Rune Soup' has his book on the shelves of this store with the knight in the front window I noticed last time I was browsing in here.
A Magical Drive in Tasmania with Gordon White from Rune Soup?
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| A section of the short story 'Washing Day' from 'The Hunter' |
UPDATE: August 25th, 2018
The new Prime minister of Australia is a Sharks supporter and while I'm more inclined not to vote for his political party I'm glad that in other ways that we are both on the same team;-)
Harold Holt disappeared in 1967, the same year that the Sharks entered the national rugby league competition.
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| Not everyone is happy about it though:-) |
I just wonder what 2019 has in store for us all ... if we make it that far, that is:-)
The patchy Sharks were troubled by the Knights for 60 minutes before streaking away in the final quarter.
It came at the end of a week in which prominent Sharks fan Scott Morrison was installed as Prime Minister, former Dragons and Sharks forward Lance Thompson died at the age of 40 and a host of departing stars played their final home games at Southern Cross Group Stadium.
Cronulla also had to weather the storms created by Andrew Fifita's controversial post-try celebration last weekend plus the fallout after Fifita and Josh Dugan made foul-mouthed criticisms of veteran NewsCorp journalist Phil Rothfield in a podcast.
Luke Lewis was farewelled by the Cronulla fans and another member of the 2016 premiership-winning side, Knights veteran Chris Heighington, was also given an impromptu send-off by his former team.
Speaking after the relieving 38-12 win, coach Shane Flanagan conceded there had been no shortage of distractions but paid a touching tribute to Thompson, who was famous as a Dragon but touched plenty of lives in his three seasons in black, white and blue."
I don't know about "roller-coaster" week, to me it was more of a spooky "haunted house" kind of week, coincidence wise.
Fascinating! Some of these synchros seem precognitive, Daz.
ReplyDeleteI had to look up just what precognitive meant Trish, so I went to good ol' Wikipedia -
ReplyDelete"Precognition (from the Latin prae-, "before" and cognitio, "acquiring knowledge"), also called prescience, future vision, future sight is an alleged psychic ability to see events in the future.
As with other forms of extrasensory perception, there is no reliable scientific evidence that precognition is a real ability possessed by anyone and it is widely considered to be pseudoscience. Specifically, precognition appears to violate the principle that an effect cannot occur before its cause.
Despite the lack of scientific evidence, many people believe precognition is real; it is widely reported and remains a topic of research and discussion within the parapsychology community."
With the benefit of hindsight it is amazing looking back from a future point and seeing either a series of WTF(?) personal and collective coincidences, or as you say Trish precognitive signs.
The thing is that only a Shark supporter like myself would stop and see a knight with a lance in a magic bookstore window as having some meaning to the coming weekend, because my team the Sharks were playing the Knights.
And even though I had the feeling that I should stop and take a photo of the armour and lance in the window in relation to some kind of omen for the coming weekend, I had no idea what it meant until the next day when I saw the news about Lance Thompson and even then it took a while for things to click and realize that the Newcastle Knights weren't just playing Lance's last club the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, but also the following week were playing the club Lance is probably more well remembered for his playing career, the St.George-Illawarra Dragons, whose logo has a knight with a lance on a horse slaying a Dragon.
But hey, as the skeptics would say, "it's all just a coincidence, because this is the real world we are living in here buddy and life doesn't work like that", right?
All I can say to skeptical thinkers is, "have you really taken a good look around at the REAL world that you and I are both living in?"