My car was stolen.

And now it was lying at the bottom of the ocean in Yachats, Oregon.

When I’d arrived at the Oregon coast for work-related workshops, I was enamored with the wild and ferocious ocean. But then I started to have nightmares. One of them was about my car. The constant sound of the crushing waves made me anxious and paranoid. In a matter of seconds, it could swallow us all.

Toward the end of my trip, I was sitting on a bench in a small town in Oregon, waiting for a colleague.

Then a man with purple hair appeared out of nowhere.

“Hello, beautiful lady,” the man said. He was dressed in neon-bright clothes. Maybe he was there for the town fair. “Would you like me to tell your fortune? It will only cost you fifteen dollars.”

I’m not really into fortune telling. I’d rather find out what I need to know in my own way. Plus at this point, I had very little cash left.

But when the man heard where I was from, he wanted to tell me something anyway. “For gratis.” After he talked about my interest in metaphysics, he asked, “Are you writing?” Then he told me that I should be writing “many books.”

Maybe that’s what he told everyone he met. But I’d already written a draft for a novel. It was based on the five volumes of my documented dreams, one volume for each year I’d lived in the States. In the last two years, I had asked my subconscious mind a question each night before going to sleep. The response dreams were fascinating — sometimes I had five dreams a night. I woke up after each dream and wrote it down.

Maybe I had become such a prolific dreamer thanks to my friend Pauline. She had gone to San Diego and had met a psychic in a city fair. I came up in their conversation, and the psychic gave her a dream-stone for me. “This will help her to connect with her vision and get out of the difficult relationship she is in,” he said.

I washed the stone, as he’d suggested. When I put it under my pillow and closed my eyes, what I saw in my mind’s eye was incredible. My dreams then became clearer and more vivid than ever.

But my novel based on my dreams was a romance — and I suck at writing romance, even the mystical kind.

“Take this coin,” the man with the purple hair said. And he gave me a huge silver coin. “It’s for good luck.”

My colleague arrived a second after he’d left.

“Did you see the man I was talking to?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “Are you OK, Lilac?”

“Yes. I was just talking to a man with purple hair and neon clothes.”

“It’s hot today. Drink some water.”

Not long after that, I found my voice as a writer. What I write involves dreams, but in a completely different way than before.

Sometimes I think that the coin the man gave me is indeed magical, like the coin in American Gods. Maybe he wasn’t a man at all but a deity. And maybe it was also he who’d given me the dream-stone.

***

While I was writing about a magical coin, Donna Everhart wrote a post about magical coins as well, or in her case, pennies. Synchronicities intrigue me, and I love Donna. Check out her post. It’s wonderful.

I run into Aaron, my downstairs neighbor. “Do you happen to have a ladder?” I ask. “I need to change a light bulb.”

“Sure,” he replies enthusiastically. “I’ll come upstairs with you and help you.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need help. I’ll take the ladder and bring it right back.”

He insists on schlepping it upstairs.

Arriving at my apartment’s front door, he says, “I’ll change the light bulb for you.”

I laugh. “I’m perfectly capable of changing the light bulb by myself.”

He must really want to come in.

I’ve read that messy people are creative geniuses. Since then I revere my chaos, waiting for the spark of genius to ignite. But I’m still uncomfortable with unexpected guests.

I unlock the front door, and he walks in with me. Happily. Then I leave the door wide open. That way, I block from view a pile of stuff that belongs in the recycling bin. It will get there. Eventually. I have an outstanding capacity to tell my inner parent’s voice, “Later,” when it comes to doing my chores. I’d rather write.

Aaron keeps staring at me, and he doesn’t seem to take in the mess. I’m glad I’ve cleaned a bit today, but I still need to clean the kitchen — where the dead light bulb is.

“Why don’t you sit here?” I say, pointing at the armchair near my computer and entertaining the idea of turning him into my beta reader. Surely he could read my manuscript while I change the light bulb (and write a blog post, and start a new novel, and clean the kitchen…later).

Finally, he seems to get the message. “I’ll leave now. Tell me when you’re done. I’ll take the ladder downstairs.”

I don’t tell him, of course. Bringing the ladder back, I learn that he is forty three. “You look twenty eight,” I say. I never know how old people are.

“That’s the story of single men in my family,” he pauses dramatically, “until they get married.”

He then exchanges phone numbers with me. “If you need the ladder again, and I’m not at home.” And he looks extremely happy.

Back at my apartment, writing, I hear a baby crying somewhere near the stairwell. It must be sweet Angel, my lovely upstairs neighbors’ eighteen-month-old daughter. I decide to trust that either one of her parents can handle the situation, and I don’t follow my rescuing instincts.

I don’t like to give mothers the feeling that they should keep their young ones quiet.

I don’t like to give fathers the feeling that they can’t take care of their kids because only women can be caretakers.

I don’t like to give anyone the feeling that they must keep quiet/must not express their feelings.

So I keep writing. Then I realize that some time has passed. And Angel is still crying. I run downstairs, following her voice, and then witness a tragic sight: Angel is sitting in her stroller next to the building’s front glass door. Only the door is closed. Her mother is on the other side of the door, practically gluing herself to it.

Their eyes are locked in horror.

I open the door immediately. The mother rushes over to Angel. She had forgotten the keys on the inside and had gotten stuck outside. Thanking me, she holds Angel, who stops crying at once and looks at me as if I were her hero. A slow one but still a hero.

Then I go to Movieing café to write. There, two guys I chat with seem too enthused about me. Usually, only drunk guys are unaffected by my “nun-ness.” But these two don’t look drunk. Neither did Aaron.

That’s when I start to suspect that something is rotten in the state of Denmark — that my nun-like shield is cracking. Although this feels more like a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream than from Hamlet.

Like a James Bond, I’ll have to use my spy skills, even if they exist only in my friend Frank’s mind. Fairies or not, I’ll find out who is behind this. Or what.

Later.