Among the mind-blowing coincidences of my life is how I met the countercultural chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, who died on September 19. He was a huge influence on me and the moment we met was extraordinary.

Coincidence is not technically the same thing as synchronicity. To believe in synchronicity, you must believe in meaning. And I did.

It was the 1990s and I was a young hippie newlywed in Bonny Doon, the backwoods of Santa Cruz, California. Like a lot of folks, my wife and I lived at the end of a long winding dirt road at the end of another long winding road. It was like a miles-long driveway. People with land out there had sprinkled the place with trailers and shacks, and they let people rent them cheap on the down low. One of those shacks was home sweet home. You could hear the ocean in the distance. The outhouse had no walls or roof, it was just … out.

I got into Ralph Abraham because I was into Terence McKenna. McKenna started doing these trialogues with Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake, who I was also into. Before long I was reading Abraham’s book Chaos, Gaia, Eros, which mapped history as a series of mathematical bifurcations, a sort of psychedelic chaos history-math. It dovetailed with Sheldrake’s psychedelic biology and McKenna’s psychedelic ethnobotany. These guys were the heavy hitters of the weird science place my head was at. I was deeply invested in synchronicity and weird science such that it became magical thinking. I thought the universe spoke through coincidences large and small, like it was leaving me a trail of breadcrumbs.

I went around projecting meaning onto everything. I saw a shooting star and thought it meant I was in love. That sort of thing. I also once thought I would win a grant based on some random thing I saw, because this grant was on my mind in the moment. I took this random thing (too stupid to describe) as an affirmation from the future that I would win the grant.

I did not win the grant, proving you can’t make money by thinking you know what the universe is trying to tell you. I am not blaming Ralph Abraham for me being a New Age dingdong. I’m just saying he had prominent guru-status for me. The whole trialogues thing made it seem like between the three of them they knew it all, understood it all, and were there to help us.

McKenna, Sheldrake, and Abraham were popular in the region, along the hippie axis down the coast from Berkely to Santa Cruz to the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, where they spoke sometimes. Abraham was even a local professor at UC Santa Cruz. Knowing that made the town feel even more magical than the glorious beach town it already was. So when I heard he and McKenna and Sheldrake were going to do a trialogue at a bookstore in town, I was ready to pounce. I could not wait to go to this event. They were just going to sit and have the most far-out conversation they could, and I loved them so much, nothing could keep me away.

But then an opportunity arose, and I had a hard choice to make. I knew a cartoonist with a public access TV show who invited me on for an interview. I was making comic zines and doing beat readings in star-spangled regalia, and I was trying to promote my work such as it was, so I said yes. But then I realized it was the same night as the trialogue. I tried to work out a way to do both, but even though my interview started before the event, I would not be able to race over and catch it. This coincidental timing was of the “cruel fate” variety. It had no meaning except as an unwelcome reminder that life blows sometimes.

Let me tell you about the strength it took to promote myself on a measly little public access show that might be seen by a dozen people, on a teeny studio set, instead of going to see these rockstar-status icons speak extemporaneously before a worshipful standing-room-only crowd at a moderately-sized local bookstore. But that’s how the DIY networking game is played: I’d just done a pirate radio interview, and I wasn’t doing so well as an artist that I could afford to refuse some free publicity. I had to knuckle under to the cruel irony, and chose to skip the trialogue.

When the time came to drive to town to the public access station, I kissed my wife goodbye, got in my car and pulled away from our shack. It was early evening, still light out but softening. I navigated the rutted curving road past all the shacks and trailers and my landlord’s big house on the hill. The dirt road became a little paved single lane on its way to the main road. Anonymous houses lay down at the ends of dusty lanes through rolling fields of grass and flowers and the occasional donkey that I‘d passed a thousand times.

A pair of pedestrians up ahead strolled along the verge. And, as I drew closer, I could not believe what I was seeing. It was like driving into a dream. I slowed down. My window was open as I stopped in front of them. It was Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake.

“Excuse me,” I said, astonished, “Are you Ralph Abraham?”

Recognizing my recognition, with a smile he was already stepping over to my window while Sheldrake stood beatifically.

Ralph Abraham, who bore a passing resemblance to Jerry Garcia, acknowledged that he was indeed Ralph Abraham. I can’t believe I was able to remain cogent, dumbfounded as I was. But I explained that I was absolutely chagrined to be missing their gig tonight, but I was being interviewed on a public access show and couldn’t make it. I assured him I was a big fan.

Abraham said, “Yes I see my book on the back seat there.” I realized I literally had his book on the back seat on top of an outrageous pile of junk including my star-spangled outfit. I dressed with a flag for a cape and used the stage name “Captain Freedom.”

Abraham mentioned that McKenna would have been there too except he was running late or doing some errand. It was like I’d met the Father and the Son on the road, with the Holy Ghost mysterious in his absence.

Before we parted company, there was a brief exchange where Abraham asked where up the road I was living. I told him. Then he indicated the little lane he and Rupert effing Sheldrake were strolling by the end of, an anonymous lane I had driven by every time I had driven to or from my house.

“I live here,” he said. “Nice to meet you, neighbor.”

Did my head explode? I think my head exploded.

Nothing really came of it except a vital sense that the universe is alive and significant.

Rest in peace, Ralph Abraham.

An index of Jim Richardson’s essays may be found here.