{"id":136,"date":"2009-07-23T21:45:11","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T21:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/07\/subway-serendipity.html"},"modified":"2009-07-23T21:45:11","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T21:45:11","slug":"subway-serendipity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/07\/subway-serendipity.html","title":{"rendered":"Subway Serendipity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"subway 1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/subway%201.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"192\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/span>This evening I got on the best subway car ever, heading for the workshop I was to give at the <a href=\"http:\/\/iyiny.org\">Integral Yoga Institut<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iyiny.org\">e<\/a> downtown. I saw the guy with the guitar, but this fellow was no mere troubador. Instead of just playing and singing, he was conducting a rousing music trivia contest, promising $2 to anyone who could name certain songs, cleverly chosen to be vaguely familiar&#8211;&#8220;I know I&#8217;ve heard that somewhere&#8221;&#8211;but nothing easily recognizable. Riders were right on maybe three out of five, although none ever got the $2.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><br class=\"webkit-block-placeholder\" \/><\/div>\n<div>Then he played something that took me way back, to teendom or tweendom or somewhere in<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"subway 2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/subway%202.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"186\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div>\u00a0the far recesses of memory. &#8220;Isn&#8217;t that James Brown?&#8221; I asked the young woman to my right. &#8220;How should I know?&#8221; she responded. &#8220;I&#8217;m twenty-one.&#8221; Well, yeah, but I thought maybe her mom had sometimes played oldies. &#8220;James Brown!&#8221; I yelled out. &#8220;Hell, no,&#8221; the musician answered, with a look that said, &#8220;There&#8217;s pitiful and there&#8217;s pitiful, and that was just pitiful.&#8221; No one else had the answer so he gave us a hint: &#8220;It starts with a &#8216;W.'&#8221; Something filed in my brain from before I got wisdom teeth rose to the surface: &#8220;Wilson Pickett!&#8221; I cried with equal parts temerity and caution. &#8220;That&#8217;s right!&#8221; exclaimed the astounded guitarist, an African-American. &#8220;You been hangin&#8217; out with black people!&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><br class=\"webkit-block-placeholder\" \/><\/div>\n<div>The young woman sitting beside me guessed the next song right. &#8220;And I&#8217;m only twenty-one,&#8221; she told him.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><br class=\"webkit-block-placeholder\" \/><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;This guy&#8217;s great,&#8221; I said to her. &#8220;I wish I&#8217;d brought my camera so I could do a video-blog.&#8221;\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><br class=\"webkit-block-placeholder\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"subway 4.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/subway%204.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"200\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div>&#8220;You have a blog?&#8221; she asked, removing her earbuds. It was as I&#8217;d said a word that reached from antiquity to twenty-one. &#8220;I have a blog, too, a <a href=\"http:\/\/noirblancetrougepartout.blogspot.com\">fashion blog<\/a>. I&#8217;m on my way to two fashion parties,&#8221; she told me. And I shared with her about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.girliegirlarmy.com\">GirlieGirlArmy.\u00a0<\/a>a site for young (and young at heart) women who want to be glamazons and also live in a way that&#8217;s environmentally respectful and cruelty free. She wrote down the URL. We were communicating. She also shared that she&#8217;s a flexitarian, eating meat very rarely since last Christmas when the turkey thing got to her. She told me that she eats blueberries every day and I gave her the recipe for the raw blueberry pie I made the other night. It seems we live near each other, and I actually think we&#8217;ll keep in touch.<\/div>\n<div><br class=\"webkit-block-placeholder\" \/><\/div>\n<div>I write in <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.victoriamoran.com\/charmed\">Living a Charmed Lif<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.victoriamoran.com\/charmed\">e<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>about\u00a0carrying a little notebook and jotting down serendipities<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"subway 5.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/133\/import\/subway%205.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div>\u00a0that occur during the day. The musician\/Wilson Pickett\/new friend event was a serendipity triple-play. That subway line runs every 4 minutes. I could have been on the earlier train or, knowing me, the later one. And each train has dozens of cars, but I stepped onto that one. Serendipity. Or Divine appointment.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><br class=\"webkit-block-placeholder\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/charmedlifelady\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.victoriamoran.com\/img\/twitter.gif\" style=\"margin-top: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-bottom: 0px;margin-left: 0px;padding-top: 0px;padding-right: 0px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-left: 0px;border-top-style: none;border-right-style: none;border-bottom-style: none;border-left-style: none;border-width: initial;border-color: initial\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This evening I got on the best subway car ever, heading for the workshop I was to give at the Integral Yoga Institute downtown. I saw the guy with the guitar, but this fellow was no mere troubador. Instead of just playing and singing, he was conducting a rousing music trivia contest, promising $2 to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charmed-life-chronicles"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Subway Serendipity - Your Charmed Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/07\/subway-serendipity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Subway Serendipity - Your Charmed Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This evening I got on the best subway car ever, heading for the workshop I was to give at the Integral Yoga Institute downtown. 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