There is a fine line between circumstance and syncronicity.

How about this for a life changing example.

I am 19 with no particular ambitions
except to one day have some ambitions.

I have moved to NYC to be with my brand new, very first boyfriend. We live in one tiny room /loft with 2 cats and an enormous German Sheppard dog. There is a pole in the middle of the room…for holding up the ceiling I supposed…the pole was also the pivot point for my boyfriend’s nightly meanderings while he tugged at his hairless beard writing poems in his head.

We live in a cheapo flophouse outside Greenwich Village. The residents belong to two general categories-live ins and transients – and to four sub categories- junkies, hookers, Buddhists and wandering souls.

My door is wide open on this particularly muggy summer day. I am sitting on the fire escape windowsill smoking KOOLS, wearing my light blue Bedouin dress…the one I immigrated to New York with – greyhound bus , no shoes, 53 bucks in my pocket, boyfriend waiting for me at the bus station tugging at his hairless beard…..….when a man (transient – wandering soul) runs into my room. I had never seen this person before and after about less than a minute I never saw him again.
He wore a long kaki coat and held a small cardboard box in his hands.

The man ran up to me …looked me straight in the eyes and actually threw the box onto my lap.
He shouted….”Here , you take it …I don’t know what to do with this anymore!” …and he ran out…disappeared.

Wish I knew where that guy went to….there were so many times I would have wanted to thank him…or slap him…

The box he dropped onto my lap was a box of paints.

I have been a visual artist now for 35 years.