I was driving south along I-95 late one night. There was a little less than two hours until I got home. At this distance, the highway was still unfamiliar to me. I sat still, entering and exiting the glow of the streetlights, my pupils swelling and shrinking at predictive intervals — they kept me awake. 

The string of lights. Coating the dashboard briefly in gold which exposes the dust that has settled between the grooves in the leather. Then it’s gone. Merging with the darkness between the lights, until I continue on into the next spot in the illumination string, and I am glowing again. Like a skipped stone, dry through the air, but meeting the water briefly along its journey, I let myself skim the light off the asphalt, following the infinite yellow rings guiding me home.

And then, a coincidence.

I was dead center under one of the streetlight halos, and it shut off. In hours of driving, hours of light then dark then light, hours of this perfect metronome, I managed to drive under the one light that gave out, and it gave out when I was right underneath it.

The car was wrapped in darkness at such an abrupt interval, I jerked my head forward. I hadn’t realized why until I looked into the rearview mirror and saw the gap — a coin missing from the infinite string — emptied instantly, the moment I drove through it. It felt so strange, so deliberate. I fell deep into thought. “Why me?” I asked.  

“It had nothing to do with you,” the streetlight answered.

“Then why did you do it right when I drove underneath you?”

“Because it was my time.”

“And your time happened to be the moment I drove underneath you?”

“Seems so.”

It didn’t make sense to me. It was too timely. 

“Did you even notice I was there?” I asked. 

There was no reply. I had skipped too far through the golden pools of light, out of range from my answer. I was left on my own as the brightness flooded my eyes once more. I jerked the wheel and merged into the far right lane, sunk into the darkness. I fell deep beneath the rippled surface, the glare of the sun piercing through the waves. The stone, impetus lost, slowly falling out of reach of the rays.   

____________

I was walking down Old Cutler in the early morning, embracing the weightlessness of an early day. The soft light of the sun shook through the leaves of the banyans whose branches canopied the road. They cast a shadow thick enough to force my eyes to adjust to the dimness. I matched the rhythm of the leaves as best I could, capitalizing on the small moments where the sunlight reached my face, and I blinked, welcoming the red blindness for the instance. The roots of the trees proved their authority by bursting through the paved sidewalk. Under the shade they looked like arms casted within cracks. I walked slowly to step between them.

Rocks find their way to the center of paths. Emblems of time cracked to bits by progress — how long have you waited there? I find my duty as the wanderer to kick them aside. Like an usher’s hand on the backs of those entering, I send them to choose where to sit. Unpredictably, they bounce on the pavement, twice, maybe more, but eventually landing once in the dirt, leaving the tar and rejoining the earth with hope to remain there as time intended. 

It is not often under the shade of the trees, under the steady procession of steps and kicks and roots, I catch something that carves its way through the dimness. Here, there was a stone. Before my foot reached it, I stopped and picked it up off the ground. 

The rhythm between the sun and the branches and my eyes broke, but eventually my eyes tuned themselves to the swaying branches. It was a dirty white triangular stone, the width of my palm, tapering to a soft point. But of interest on this rock was an orange growth: a cyst-like half-globe perfectly protruding from the base of the stone. It shimmered in the sun, like it was made of tiny embedded stars, and in the shade it was like matte amber, preserving whatever’s inside. I rubbed my thumb along the growth. It was hard like the rest of the rock, but had a sandpaper texture. I contemplated breaking it open, but it was too pretty to destroy, so I dropped it back within the paved path, and kicked it, so that it may decide where to lie.  

But this rock bounced back into the center of the path – not uncommon for rocks that take an extra bounce. And as with these rocks, if they choose to roll back into my lane, I shall kick them again. And so I did. And I kicked the twinkling rock once more. But the growth kept it on the path like a punching dummy teetering on its rounded bottom. I kicked it again. Then again. Then again. Until I finally shoved it with the side of my foot directly perpendicular toward the dirt, feeling uncomfortable having been forced to make a decision, but even then it tumbled back onto the path. I picked up the stone, its amber cyst winking at me in the sun, and I heaved it across the street into the mess of dangling roots of a banyan tree.

My sun drunken stroll resumed as normal for the next half hour until I felt the moment where the sweat started to form on my forehead. I turned around with the enjoyable morning sun still active overhead.

It warmed the back of my head, the sun. It had raised up enough so that the roots were more visible in the shade. And then, about a half hour back in the direction of my home – a coincidence. Sitting atop a tectonic collision of roots that jutted through the path, there was the stone.

I could tell from the way it sparkled in the pools of sunlight that seeped through the leaves: it was the same stone. I was frozen in shock. It took a couple twitches to unfurrow my brow and take a couple steps forward.  The same bulbous orange growth, rough as sandpaper, sitting there in front of me. I picked it up.

I looked around as if searching for the person who put it there, but there was no one and no sound but the pulsing crescendo of the wind against leaves.

I looked back down at the rock. My nails left thin white streaks where they had been filed down as I rubbed it, unconvinced it was real. Had I crossed the street at some point? Had my throw been weak? Are there other rocks like this one around? No, no. It was the same stone. “Why me?” I asked.

“It had nothing to do with you,” the stone answered.

“But I threw you across the street,” I said.

”Yeah?” the stone said.

“And you appeared right back on the same path.”

“I didn’t ‘appear’, I was brought down from the roots of that banyan by that squirrel. I slipped into the middle of the road then a biker hit me at just the right angle to launch me back over here.”

I stared at the stone with my lips parted.

“It had nothing to do with you,” it said.

I dropped it back in the middle of the path and kicked it hard into the pile of chipped limestone that lined the front gate of a house. “Nothing to do with me,” I said to myself. 

My walk home continued on autopilot. My head tilted forward, and the hair on my head felt warm to the touch from the sun. I thought about them — coincidences — and whether they really had anything to do with me. Traffic busied along the road. Engines and tires against asphalt consumed the sound of the leaves – more similar than dissimilar. It locked me into reflection.

What constitutes coincidence? 

Two incidents. One and then another, or both at the same time. And then something that binds them. Timing was the something between the streetlight and my car. Repetition was the something between the stone and my path. The something is what interested me – the spine connecting the pages. The something which allows me to hold these incidents in my hands, the something granting substance to moments forgotten otherwise. Each incident in a lifetime has the potential, but most float by, droplets into the stream. Who is it that grants them their something so that they may rise above the water and etch themselves into my memory?

I arrived at home. My legs had guided me back as my mind wandered elsewhere. Something, something. I stood letting the sun beat against my skin. A breeze tickled the hair along my arms. Something, something. A bird made itself known through its song. A lizard flung itself from the lawn onto the sidewalk. Something, something. I stood among the incidents of now. Hyper-aware of my presence among them. My presence, my presence…

My presence! An incident in itself! My breathing pushing air into the trees, my sweat dripping cold from my brows, my feet stamping prints into the grass — incidents upon incidents upon incidents added to the collection of incidents that make up life. So many incidents strung along and processed through the gaps within my brain. It is now, the syncing of the inner and outer moments of time, which forms the ultimate coincidence. The something that occupies memory. The something that is mindful of my presence within the never ending string of incidences. The something of my existence alone.

I am all it takes to grant incidences their meaning. Under the streetlights on I-95, I could ask the cloud I passed under, “Why me?” Under trees along Old Cutler, I could ask the bird that sung as I stepped over some roots, “Why me?” They would have the same answer: “It has nothing to do with you.” But with mindfulness, these questions are irrelevant. Every moment lacking synergy can be ascended into coincidence simply by my own recognition. Moments upon moments upon moments of life — all have the same potential. Each moment in life becomes important because it existed at the same instance as me.

And this – the ultimate coincidence – brings me purpose.

I looked down at my shoes and stepped backward. I watched the grass creep back to their upright positions from the indent I had left. As I stared, I blinked the sweat from my eyes, flinging a droplet that I tracked as it plummeted directly onto a snail’s shell. The snail continued along its path through the green. My eyes being the only pair that would grace this creature’s existence for the rest of its time.

Something for me, I thought, and I headed inside.