When I was a little girl I could predict earthquakes. It kinda weirded my mom out.  I called it “my radio” I could predict down to the hour or two. I would tell my mom, “there’s going to be an earthquake this afternoon around 3” and more often than not, there would be. Granted, we lived in the Bay Area California where earthquakes aren’t a rarity, but I predicted them with enough consistency that my mom suggested we go to UofC Berkeley and get me and “my radio” checked out. The day after she told me that, I told her that my radio was broken. And it was…until I was 17 and back in Oakland with my dad. Since then, I’ve had a few occurrences of my radio working and it makes me happy when it does. Like visiting with an old friend.

I guess I’ve always been pretty sensitive to my surroundings. I attribute my childhood radio to being tuned in to the normal vibrations that animals are naturally tuned into. This makes sense considering we are also animals. However, we have removed ourselves from nature quite a bit and so don’t usually pick up (consciously at least) on things like that.

I think most of us have the ability to pick up on nearly imperceptible rhythms. We get a “gut feeling” that something is off or something “doesn’t feel right.” Usually we get those feelings with people we are close to – people with whom we have a rhythm already and so when the normal patterns change or shift, we notice them even if we can’t quite put our finger on what it is. We often sense that “something’s not right” feeling when going to buy something like a used car. It’s almost a cliché how common that feeling is for that particular exchange, but if we listen to our gut, we are too often right. Our instincts are strong and if we listen to them, we are rarely steered wrong.