Two words I'm hard pressed to find exact definitions for. Profluence, I've lifted from the novelist and teacher John Gardner, used to describe the unfolding-in-time, causal chain of events that needs to be demonstrated in good fiction.
Synchronicity, I've lifted from Carl Jung. It ties in with Wayne Dyer's philosophy as well.
And, I assume it is fairly self-evident what it means, so I won't even attempt to define it.
I had just completed reading the first novel I've read by John Gardner, Nickel Mountain, after having completed Gardner's Becoming a Novelist, and being halfway-through his The Art of Fiction. All of these comments by Gardner regarding fiction, and what makes for interesting fiction (maintaining the "vivid and continuous dream" in the reader's mind), had got me thinking about fiction and life.
So many things, big and small, in my life have made their appearance at the exact right time. As if we are prepared for things to come. Probably everyone has had the experience of learning something new, and then days, or seconds later, coming across an example of what they just learned about. Part of this, no doubt, can be explained by the fact that we do not notice what we do not know.
But then again, there is a deeper sense of strangeness, that often attends these events. Perhaps a Heideggerian spirit of the times moves over a period, or a place and things congregate. At any rate, here is one of the small Synchronous stories that happened to me this afternoon.
Having taken pictures of an old Mission in San Diego, I had decided to send them via US mail to my Aunt. After digging around
for a proper envelope to send the CD and some papers in, I resigned myself to not having what I needed. Then, going into my room, on the top of my trash can, was an shipping envelope, of just the right size. It was padded like I needed, and then I noticed that it had two uncancelled stamps on it. Lo and behold, the postage scale in my house confirmed it had the exact postage. Synchronicity.
...but back to the idea of profluence in fiction. Is this a case of life imitating fiction, or fiction imitating life? Often the events in my life are lived out like a novel. We are prepared beforehand for events later to come, as if the author was preparing the reader for events in a later chapter.
And a vague, dreamlike idea on this note as well - if life is novel-like, I had the distinct sense that life is like free-falling from a great height - in the sense that you probably do not know the answers, cannot fully plumb the depths of meaning - until the last few moments before impacting the ground. Like reviewing one's life upon a deathbed, looking back, weighing it in the scales. You cannot judge a book by its cover, but you have to read clear through the last chapter before closing the cover and contemplating the meaning.
Even though witnessing strange events like I describe can make one see that things are meaningful - that is - not by chance, they cannot reveal what their meaning is at this point in time.
(For anyone interested in for more explanation of profluence in fiction, read more here. A webpage from some unknown (to me), fellow blogger.
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