Art Of the Day / Coincidence

Monkey has decided to create some sort of art every day, for at LEAST the rest of 2010. He is going to put these pieces of art up on his blog, Politics=Art=Culture, daily for the rest of 2010. He's starting today, so be sure to check it out!

Also, Monkey has to relate two incidents that occurred recently on our trip down to Long Beach/San Diego for our friends' wedding which is strong evidence (yes, we know about the principle of self-proving-ness, or whatever it's called in social psychology) in the idea of the Law of Attraction:

1) Seal is looking for a bagel shop she used to frequent when she lived back in Long Beach. We're driving down the road she thinks it was on, and we turn into a shopping center. I point out a bagel shop, and she knows that it's the wrong one, but she remembers it being in a shopping center with another cafe/bagel place in it. I then see a sign that says "The Bagelry" that's been removed (thus the shop left the plaza). I get on my phone and look up the bagelry, as Eve thinks that might be the place. We find an address, and we drive over.

When we get to our destination, we drive around the lot, and cannot find the listed address. Out of luck, we decide, on a whim, to see what's in the other large shopping center across the street. As we're driving, I sees a place called "Grounds" and I ask her if that's it. She remembers the place being much smaller, but we decide to get out of the car to check the menu anyway - and we've found it!

Grounds actually just expanded a few years back, misleading us as we were looking for a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place, as opposed to the diner-sized restaurant it is now. Eve got her childhood bagel sandwich, and we somehow found the place she was looking for.

The strangest thing is that we would have never found Grounds if we weren't looking for the Bagelry, a place that Eve probably has never eaten at.

2) It turns out that our friend Kevin is also in Long Beach due to a business training event. We try to meet up, but he tells me his phone is dying, so he might not be able to get a hold of us on our one free day down in LB. We decide that Eve and her family might take me to a nearby park for some nice naturetime, and I let Kevin know about our plans to head out over to the park. He says he might not be able to make it, but if he is available, he should call us.

Instead of going to the park, however, because it looks like it's going to rain, we decide to make a trip to the only store that sells Indonesian food in the greater Long Beach area. It's this little tiny shop, which is generally only frequented by people specifically looking for Indonesian food.

As we go in, Eve is showing me around, and I look up to see Kevin walking in. Randomly, he happened to eat lunch nearby (and he charged his phone in the restaurant), and got thirsty so he followed a large group of people into the Indo store, thinking if so many people were going in, they must have some good food/drinks/snacks/whatever.

Of all the places in all of the surrounding Long Beach area, the one guy we're looking for happens to stroll into the one shop we're in thanks to him wanting a soda. Crazy.

Another example that just happened two days ago:
My dad leaves me a message that he found out that my great-grandfather carved a wood block while in the Japanese American internment camps and the relief is now in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. On a business trip, my dad was going to go to the Smithsonian and see his grandfather's work in person.

Since I missed his call due to work, and I didn't want to chance waking him up (due to the time difference between California and D.C., I wait until the next day thinking "well, he's probably in a meeting, so I'll just leave a message." Imagine my surprise when he picks up WHILE HE IS STANDING IN FRONT OF THE WOOD BLOCK IN THE SMITHSONIAN. He told me he literally had just found the piece, and walked up to it when he got my call. Crazy, right?

Anyway, although this has definitely helped to sell this little Monkey on the Law of Attraction, I'm not going to bank on just positive thinking to help me reach my goals. Hard work, determination, and action are what's going to do the heavy lifting, but if this Law of Attraction stuff helps out, I'm totally down.