I have always liked the word serendipity, enjoying its carefree and spunky five-syllable trip down my tongue, so this after-sex shower scene from Michael Gruber's "The Tropic of Night" made me smile.
She kissed his neck.
"Serendipity that I called, huh?" he said.
"No, serendipity is when you're looking for something and you find something else that's even better. Penicillin. Columbus too, I guess. What you mean is synchronicity, which is when two independent variables happen at the same time, in a pseudo-meaningful way. Serendipity is scientific, synchronicity isn't."
"Why not?"
She tossed the book on his belly and slipped out of bed. "Read the book."
"Why should I when I have you? Where are you going?"
"The shower, where you can join me, if you promise not to get me started."
Under the lukewarm stream, he soaped her long back, while she held her braid away from the water. He said, "So tell me, why isn't synchronicity scientific?"
"By definition. And Jimmy, I want you to know that you are the first and only man I have ever discussed epistemology with under the shower."
"I appreciate that," he said.
"It was. In any case, science looks for causality. Event B only occurs after Event A, or is associated with it more than chance alone would allow. Lightning always precedes thunder, and so we assume that lightening causes thunder, and we look for a physical connection between the two events, and in that case, we find it, and science marches on. Synchronicity… proposes a linkage between two events that is meaningful without being causal or related in any reproducible or deterministic way… me wanting to get together with you and you happen to call me…"
"It's like luck."
"In a way. But it's supposed to be meaningful on the psychic level, too. The cosmos or the collective unconscious is trying to reach us. Horseshit, in other words." She looked down at him and let out a yelp. "Yikes, get that thing away from me," she cried, and hung a wet washcloth on it, then turned the cold tap all the way up.
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