Numbers

Every number has a face, a personality, a body, a soul. Some are more famous than others.

1. 1 is beautiful, solitary, pure. Not nothing. We can all understand 1. Upright. Nearly invisible. Powerful. Unified. Phallic. Adam.

2 is balance, harmony, love. Twins. Parallels. II. Eerie. Peaceful. Eve has joined.

3 is where things get complicated, where choices have to be made, where someone's feelings are going to get hurt. A direction is chosen. I> Cain and Abel. Love triangles.

4 is the beginning of war, democracy, servitude. Greater possibilities arise.

These numbers all have consequences, ancient powers they carry around with them. This 7 is a descendant of all the 7s that have ever existed. It pumps the same blood. 49 is 7s ancestor. 14, 21, these are 7s grandchildren. They are haunted by the ghost of 7, have traces of the same features. Everyone possesses their own 7. 7 is made of my history of it and the shared history of all of our 7s.

8 is a sculpture, a piece of art, an individual. We can visualize it. :::: We can conceptualize all of them till 10. Then they group too large. So do their shapes. A 9-sided shape is almost too much. A neuftet makes too much sound. They have to group into orchestras after a certain mass. They have to cooperate. The individuals get lost in the shuffle.

The greater the number, the more diluted. Is 639 familiar to you? Is it an old friend? A celebrity? It's too complicated to identify. It is a stranger. A vague, complex face in the crowd. I feel sorry for the higher numbers. They are lost in the flood, nearly meaningless. Only meaningful in specific instances, often rounded, forsaken. Discovered accidentally, not anyone's destination. 27,888 probably means something to somebody. A lottery winner. A salary. Too abstract to visualize. Too scattered.

As the years have stacked, so have our possible sums. Billions, trillions have moved within our grasp. Soon we'll have to invent new numbers. Split up the ones we already have before they're split for us. Go beyond the horizon. We'll reach google. We already have.

Decimals are crumbs falling past our concern for them. We need special calculations, tools, to tweeze them out.

0 is the most profound idea. The origin, like God, like that of all life, born out of nothing, from a concept we can't explain, define, we know not where from. Divide any number in half as many times as you'd like, you will never discover 0. A place only comprehended against something, by not knowing. You just have to trust it exists. We've all felt it, but we can't show it to anybody else. You can't see 0, but all numbers end up there. It's a circle around emptiness, lassoing the invisible. 0 is where we came from and where we will end up. It is a hole in the body, in the ground. It is a cup, or maybe a funnel, a sieve. 0. Starts with one of the unlikeliest letters. "Z". 0 is too big to hug, to hold in your hand, and yet you always do. 0 resets the groups, stacks them. 10, 100, 1000, those 0s in their bodies are like water and air, nothing, life giving.

Infinity. Infinity is just the end of 0s stride. Will we ever touch the end of the spectrum? Will we ever live till the end of time? We spend our lives divying up the infinite, making boundaries. What else is there to do?

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Some people have Saturday night
and some people have Sunday Morning

The Little Blue Globe (a song)

Up in my parent’s attic
Sifting through the remnants of the things that I did
I found the little blue globe
That used to glow in my room as a kid

Dusted it off
Plugged it back in
Wouldn’t you know?
It started to glow again

There’s a little viewfinder
if you look into it you can see the world.
Over time the pictures have been
burnt out and blurred

There’s a red cape flaunted by a Man in gold
There’s an Eskimo fishing out in the cold
There's beautiful women with jewels in their faces
Lands so far they’re only fantasy places

The years have passed,
and I’ve gotten older
Circumstance
hasn’t brought them closer.
But the globe still glows
And the globe still spins
Still carries the dreams
Of all of it’s men.
Still carries the burden
Of all of their sins.
I’m so glad it’s
On my shelf again.