A 'Black Swan' Event or a Result of Intervening Transcendent Forces?

[A report written to Isabel, my daughter, about an unlikely present I received from an unknown woman on the street I live the day after a Christmas which coincided with Chanukah.]

 "Taking off the mask, I saw myself at the mirror. 
  I was the child from many years ago".                                Álvaro de Campos* (free translation)             

         

Dear daughter, perhaps you know that on some May day 2018 I lost my luxurious ‘Collected Poems of Fernando Pessoa’ Nova Aguillar edition, don`t you? As you are aware, I used to constantly read and re-read those enchanting poems, thus getting deeply sad for its lost. Anxious, I have returned to my usual reading places: bookstores, cafeterias, restaurants, clubs. However, nothing was to be found! I thought and still take it forZpossible that perhaps in some hurried domestic cleaning, my precious book has been thrown into the trash, mixed by chance with old newspapers. Unfortunately, that special edition was published only some decades ago, then disappearing from bookstores. Even its publishing house no longer exists.

I searched for weeks in used books stores here in the neighborhood, in vain. In one of these I was suggested to consult Internet retailers, where in fact I did find some copies of sought book. I hesitated, however, to place an order online because I was afraid to receive a book in poor condition at home. I decided that I would only buy it when I happen to visit one of such physical book sellers.
However, since I’ve been too busy for that, I put off this quest for many months. Until last December 26th, around noon, when I came down from my apartment to take an espresso at a nearby Café.
As I got to sidewalk and turned right, I saw behind me a woman with a grocery cart, packed with books. As you know, this is an exceedingly rare event here on Rua Oscar Freire, which has no libraries nor bookstores. Pushing that cart together with her 7-year-old son, she passed ahead of me, since I was deliberately walking slowly, aiming to take a close look to the all that books pile. Before me, a rare bibliophiles’ worth treasure, including the complete poetries of Drummond, Guimarães Rosa, Machado, Camões, among other great works.
Greeting her, I said: “Congratulations, what a good literary taste is yours!” 

There I could quickly see among the stacked books a ‘Complete Prose Writings’ by Fernando Pessoa, from the same Nova Aguillar Publisher, which had printed my lost Pessoa’s ‘Poetry’. Both books are like twins, but the last one never leaves my shelf, being still unread. Bernardo Soares must forgive me, but to read his “Livro do Desassossego” (‘Book of Disquiet’) seemed to me a too melancholy task, at least till the third page, where I stopped a long time ago.
Just below this first I saw another one, also edited by ‘Nova Aguillar. At that moment this thought came to my mind: “In my opinion Pessoa’s prose will never be as appreciated as his poetry, a proof is here on this scene, where two copies of his Collected Prose, published as a twin book of his Collected Poetry, despite such a dull content, are going to be put for sell surely as a mere ‘cat by hare’. Only opening it you may see it is the Prose, and not that wonderful Poetry book lost by me.
Despite those pessimistic thoughts, I asked permission to pick the books with my hands, to see publication dates.
Blessed heavens, I had been quite wrong! That second Pessoa’s book on cart was nothing less than another copy of his Collected Poetry, exactly the one I had been looking for in vain since at least seven months.
To the shopping cart’s owner, I said at once: “How amazing, you are carrying a rare edition of the most precious Portuguese poetry, exactly the one I have been searching vainly for many months!”

And going straight ahead to the point, I added: “Are you going to sell it?”

She replied, “But I’m not selling these books, and, by the way, I see you really like this Pessoa’s a lot! So, it is from now on all yours!”
Astonished, I said, “you must be an angel, who have come to my path! I have been searching this precious edition on bookstores for many months”.
I suggest you calculate the ex-ante likelihood of such an event, in all its details, to taking place on the day after Christmas. Wouldn’t it be a limit infinitely tending to zero?
Was it due to Santa Claus, or to a Guardian Angel about whose existence I have been reassured on last Chanukah?
Or could we take as enough explanation for the lucky event merely the statistical ‘Large  Numbers’ Law’?

Events like this, even so trite, put in check the empirical-rationalist worldview which has engulfed the occidental culture in the last centuries. The     of its occurrence with all its details, calculated ex-ante, that is, before it has happened, is a limit infinitely tending to ZERO! And among such details, impossible not to stress the date it happened.

Remember that an impossible fact may be defined as one which has a zero probability of occurrence.

 

* A Fernando Pessoa's heteronym.