Weird Moments When Disparate Paths Become One

First a little background. Those of you who have been around a while know that I am a pretend cowboy. That is, I dress up as a cowboy and shoot real guns in competition known as Cowboy Action Shooting. Those that don't know that can go read up on it here. Go on. We'll wait. Everybody else, smoke'em if you've got'em. Hmm, hmm, la la la. So, how's everybody been? Can you believe the weather? What about...wha...oh, you're back. Good. So now everybody knows about the cowboy thing, right?

A little more background. I personally have an open mind when it comes to history. Especially ancient history. I don't think we know everything that went down and I don't believe there's a particularly high degree of certainty about the things that we do know went down. I don't care how many degrees or how authoritative the expert *ologists are. There are simply too many unexplainable things all around the world and a couple of pot shards here and there just aren't going to explain it. Ever since I read "Chariots of the Gods" when I was a kid I've been fascinated by the possibilities and I enjoy reading speculative theories. Theories that in many ways do a better job of explaining the past that the BS fed to us by the established, respected, mainstream experts. So I was reading a book over the weekend by Graham Hancock and I was in a section where he was discussing ancient Egypt. He was going into great detail about their creation myth and talking about their gods, Osirus, Ra, Set, Isis, and so forth.

So here I am on Saturday, Cowboy Bruce walking through the kitchen with ancient Egyptian gods on my mind (okay, the weirdness of the previous sentence sums me up pretty well). I glance on the counter and spot my daughter's American Lit textbooks. (WARNING. The following sentence contains an extremely high degree of SARCASM and may not be suitable for younger audiences) Now this is HIGHLY unusual because my kids NEVER, EVER leave any of their things lying around. For some reason I decided to open the book and check it out. I cracked it somewhere in the middle and thumbed through a few pages. With the book lying on the counter opened to a random page this is the first thing my eyes fell on:

I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra
by Ishmael Reed

I won't post the text of the poem but here is a link to it on another site. Maybe not everybody's cup of tea, but I liked it. A lot. Mr. Reed is a contemporary African American novelist, poet and essayist that is known for his off-beat satirical commentary on American society. He is considered controversial by some.

I thought this alone was an interesting bit of coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, whatever. Then I read the poem and a line in the seventh stanza stood out, "I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash, the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and Aquarius." I'm a Pisces and my wife is an Aquarius. It's our daughter's book. Hmmm (okay, it's son in the poem not daughter but still...Hmmm).

As if that wasn't enough, it continued getting weirder. I decided to look up more information about Mr. Reed and discovered that he is credited as being the first (or at least one of the first) to refer to Bill Clinton as "America's First Black President" in an April 1998 column in the Baltimore Sun. Given that this very issue had come up recently in the Democratic Primary contest I thought it appropriate to take a "Whoa" moment and allow that little tingly shiver to pass.

My point in sharing this story? None really. Except maybe to remind you to keep your mind open to possibilities. Every once in a while some weird stuff crosses your path.

What do you suppose it all means?