The experience I should wish to register now occurred when I was fifteen years of age. It is nothing but a curious set of coincidences; but so curious indeed, and so unlikely, that at the time I thought it should be the expounder of some secret meaning. Though this is certainly untrue, still the events were not inconsequential, insofar as they did produce a considerable effect on my psyche.
The events transpired in the least genial of winter days, the sky in its entirety hidden under a cloak of clouds. From the moment my eyes were in that day opened, I felt as if a sort of spiritual malady had taken over me, and spent every hour in such deep state of despondency, and seized by such dejection, that I barely reckoned myself—for I naturally tend to be enthusiastic and gay. Perhaps three or four hours after noon, I spontaneously decided to take a walk around the neighborhood, though by virtue of which motive I ignore, since I was not in the habit of taking walks in such unprompted manner. I walked for about fifteen minutes, and during the whole duration of my walk, I could hear an ambulance siren going. This in itself is nothing, but the fact that the volume of the siren did not recede, as if not only the ambulance were still, but I were still as well, and my steps took me not closer nor farther from its wail, seemed to me strange and suggestive. I was already in a suggestive and sad mood, and indeed I sensed an ominous tone in everything I came to find, and particularly in this wail I could not distance myself from, and which I felt was prelusive of some catastrophic event.
In this curious state of mind, by chance I came across a friend of mine, whom I will call N. I told him of my restless mood, and he suggested that we sat in a nearby park and relaxed for a while, which is what we did. But upon sitting in the cold grass, and turning my face to the sky, I saw an impressively large cloud that flew considerably below the rest, and which—at least I thought—undoubtedly had the shape of an executioner's hood, with the very holes intended to give way to mouth and eyes. In this I could not have been very wrong, for my friend agreed with me with excitement—but as he found in this curiosity nothing more than entertainment, the brewing dismality which had taken hold of me already grew furiously, like a solution effervescing at the contact with a most malicious agent—and more and more it was suggested to my suggestive conscience that some kind of danger lurked close to me and surrounded me. I became so agitated, and in so great need of rest, that I retired from N's company and returned to my home, which I had left not more than thirty minutes ago. I expected to find the place as I left it; namely, with my mother and sister chatting in the patio, my brother somewhere upstairs, the lights on and the windows open. But as I entered, a much different scenario was configuring before me. Every light was off, which resulted, because the day was so grey, in almost absolute obscurity—Every window was shut and the most absolute silence reigned. I felt as if I had entered into a world of silence; as if, as were the fire or the air for Presochratic philosophers, the material principle of that world was silence. I asked if anybody was home, and after a few seconds I sensed light footsteps descending from the second floor, and saw that it was Z, who was my nanny when I was a boy, and who still lives in the familiar home practically as a member of my family, and whose son grew with me as my own brother. She was the only one home, and seemed quite agitated as well. Without letting me speak, nay, before I gave three steps into the hall, she told me of a dream she just had, and asked me about its meaning—something she usually does, as she is a quite superstitious person, and holds the view that dreams have a precise symbolic meaning. She said she saw a jet plane flying in the sky, that the plane wrote an M in the sky, and then proceeded to fall from the sky. Her ex-husband's name was M....., and asked if the dream bore any meaning with respect to him. But I was agitated already, and felt uneasy and sad, and only wanted to sleep, so I eluded her questions and went to bed without discussing the matter much.
Nothing else happened that day. But the next morning, during the first hour of school, the vice-director came to our classroom and asked a friend of mine, M....., named just like Z's ex-husband, to accompany him. I payed little attention to this, until some minutes later there came again M....., and explained the reason he was called. Several of his family members had died in a plane crash.
I will not describe the feeling aroused in my soul by these news. I will rather provide a quick summary of the events so far. First, I woke up with an ominous feeling, which was exacerbated by the strange effect which surely normal events, like the constant wailing of an ambulance, had on my suggested conscience. Secondly, I saw in the sky an executioner's hood, which I took for a symbol of death, further increasing my uneasiness. Thirdly, María practically threw her dream upon me, a dream where a plane drew an M in the sky and subsequently fell—with the important comment that M..... was his ex-husband's name. Lastly, like a staged and preconceived final act: The very next morning, my friend, also named M....., loses his loved ones in one of the most unlikely manners of all: A plane crash!
I have not forgotten the deepness nor the violence of the anguish which sequestered me that morning, and which fettered me for days, nor the strange and frightening suspicion that supernatural forces must have orchestrated the events. In particular, I remember the fear of anything remotely similar happening again, for I thought I had been given signals of a terrible faith, and had failed to interpret them, and lamented the very idea of facing such responsibility again. I distinctly recall as well that it was around this time that I first knew of Carl Jung. My father had noticed my pensive and despondent state, and asked me about it, and after hearing the whole story, instead of discarding it as nonsense, recommended that I should examine some concepts of psychoanalysis—particularly those of projection (which is sensible) and synchronicity (which verses over an experiential fact, as this very entry attests, but would be nonsensical to treat as an objective fact). His intention, I gather, was to remove from my soul the thought, which I had confessed to him, that I was going crazy, as well as to provide some insight into the events that depended not on supernatural explanations. In fact, if experiences such as these were not only common to many people, but studied and (at least in attempt) explained, then I would stop feeling so strange and begin to examine the events from a calmer and more reasonable position. In any case, the matter was dropped after a short period of time, during which I devoted more serious efforts than before to the inquiry of my inner world. These efforts did not begin with the experience I have hereby recorded, but they certainly became more serious once I became aware of how easily an individual could be tricked by his own ideas, or fooled by his own dreams, if inattentive. Perhaps this very site, with all its personal notes, whose degree of self-disclosure sometimes feels obscene to me, would not have existed if it weren't for the coincidences I've made public, and the boost they gave for my curiosity for psychological processes.