Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Funny thing about coincidences, they’re there only if you’re willing to put the reasonable and rational view of the routine world aside and follow the bread crumbs. And the really cool thing of it is, the mindset suited to getting the most out of coincidences, (and their really hot sister, miracles), is grounded in the idea that we, ‘don’t have worry if it all feels all silly, even childish, just relax and enjoy the show’.

So, I was sitting at my computer last night working on the next chapter of The Case of the Missing Starr reading an article in Volume No. 6 of, ‘Image [&] Narrative’. The title of the article was, ‘Towards an Ecology of Understanding: Semiotics, Medium Theory, and the Uses of Meaning.’

The reason I was reading this article was because it was a search return on the word, ‘semiotics*’. The reason I was searching the word, semiotics, was to gain a sense of how the heck a person who actually understands ‘semiotics’ would sound. If they were talking to us. Or, in this case, writing. Not to us, to Ian Devereaux, the protagonist in ‘The Case of the Missing Starr’. (No spoiler alert needed, but in the upcoming chapter, Ian gets information he requested from Dr. Leann Thunberg, the head of the Department of Advanced Anthropology and Cultural Semiotics at Radcliffe.) Subsequently, I was searching for anything linked to semiotics, came across the article, and started to read. (It was fun! Mostly because it was almost unintelligible. The extent of my knowledge of semiotics, consists of, well, the word ‘semiotics’. That said, I am a clark. So reading the words of the article was every bit like watching a foreign language film without subtitles**. Fun in the ‘a view from afar’ sense.)

In any event, I was ploughing through the article when Phyllis walked into the room.

Without preamble, she began to describe her search for something to read among her favorite books and how all the bookmarks were stuck in books, except for one. And the one bookmark, the only one not already committed to…well, marking a book, consisted of a simple quote from the Bible. It was from like, Matthew, Seven-Eleven, the famous, ‘Seek and ye shall find.’***

However, that was not what Phyllis found interesting enough to tell me. What was, (interesting enough to tell me), was a connection that occurred in her head between the Bible passage and the video commercial for the clothes iron we bought to replace the old one. (Phyllis has an impressively developed sense of the mystical, miraculous and coincidental; she was laughing as she related her experience.)

I could do only what a clark would do. I found the commercial on the YouTube and we both laughed in our enjoyment. (Hint: its all about the background music. How can you not feel inspired to reach for greatness or as Loki said in ‘The Avengers’,  (become), ‘burdened with glorious purpose’.

Here:

* noun 1. the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

** you know, like, those are attractive people doing interesting things in a place I’ve never gone…. I shoulda majored in that/ I probably should have traveled more back then/ Well, I do have a passport, nothing says I can’t learn the language/get on a plane/ do those things, right?

*** Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
      For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.