# Numbers (Howell Creek Radio address for June 16, 2013 -- ) I've got a new metaphor these days, a new way of looking at life, at least when I'm feeling lazy and dualistic. Numbers and Words. Words and Numbers. Everything falls on one side or the other. I remember being seven years old, doing my math homework at the kitchen table in our cramped little duplex in Minneapolis. The year we moved out of the Ottawa National Forest and into the big city was the same year I was forced into the world of numbers -- go figure. So here I am, seven years old, looking at my workbook, it says "6 + 6" and there's a line underneath, with a spot for me to write in the answer. I think, I know this one. I remember seeing this same problem before. I look out the window, out into space, and think about everything else in the whole world, for about half an hour (in little kid time). And mom says, "Joel: _do your math_." And I look back at the page and it still says "6 + 6." I know this one, I think. Now, I'm an office manager. I run payroll, cut checks, send out statements; I'm basically a janitor for numbers, sweeping them around, cleaning them up and dumping them into the correct bins. If anyone had told me when I was a pre-adolescent that one day I'd get to be the guy who types all the numbers in the right places and files all the papers in the right filing cabinets...well, I don't know what I would have thought. I might have taken drastic, evasive action. I still think about taking drastic, evasive action. (Although, I think that may be a normal reaction to being told what your fate will be, no matter _what_ that is.) But there it is. Numbers. I'm at this job because the owners need someone to organize their numbers, and just like everyone else, I need someone to give me numbers so I can take them home, and then spend more time organizing my own little pile of numbers. * * * There's a story by Ray Bradbury called _The Long Rain_, about a trio of astronauts who crash land on Venus, where it never ceases to rain. The story opens, > "The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped." After days of walking in the drenching rain for a place called the Sun Dome where they can find relief, they start to battle with insanity. Human just aren't built psychologically to live under a nonstop downpour of water; if they are unable to find shelter in time, they go deaf; they lose feeling in their face and hands; and finally, losing their minds, they tilt their heads back and just let the water run down their nose and mouth, and drown themselves. That's what numbers feel like to me. Numbers are the incessant rain in my work life, in my home life. Vendor accounts, check runs, tenant statements, wire transfers, payroll deductions, checkbooks, service agreements, rent rolls, late fees, mortgage payments, monthly, quarterly and annual tax returns...and spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. Endless columns of numbers falling down on your head, totaling up and running off into other columns, forming streams, rivers, and lakes of numbers. The analogy works pretty much any way you look at it. Like raindrops, numbers aren't distinct from each other. The more of them are falling on your head, the harder it is to think. Even the word _number_, taken literally, seems to indicate _a thing which causes numbness_. So anytime I get a taste of thinking in terms of _words_, I feel as though the sun has broken through and is shining on my rain-bleached face. * * * At work, any time a task crosses my desk that involves words as opposed to numbers, I drop everything I'm doing, no matter how urgent, for this word-centered task, no matter how mundane. "I need this PDF converted into a Word document," someone says -- an utterly mundane task, but to me, oh! It is the nearest thing to being actually paid to create art. People applaud my flexibility but I know it is just selfishness. I'm supposed to be out mopping numbers in the rain, and I just want to get out of it for awhile. Even if I did nothing but tinker with hyphenation and line heights all day long, I would be playing in the sunshine, because words! If numbers are rain, words are silver sunlight fringing the clouds in a blue sky, or an orangered sunset falling on the white and yellow birch trees. Look up at the trees, see how the wind blows through them. Look at the albino squirrel digging up our red geraniums in the back yard. Hear the sound of your cup as you set it down on the wooden desk. If you're good with numbers, you'll be able to tell how these things got here; you'll know whether there will likely be more or fewer of them in four years; or if you'll even be here to see them -- perhaps you'll move and all your surroundings will change, purely because of what the numbers are telling you. But words give you the experience of things the way the really are, right now, in this moment, without any other end in mind to distract you. Numbers and words are my yin and yang, my law and grace. Numbers are Moses beating you on the head with the commandments: weighing you and finding you wanting; words are Jesus Christ, who happens to go by the nickname of _Logos_ or _Word_, calling you by name and inviting you in to eat. Numbers are cities, machines, the concrete jungle, deeply interlocked systems and patterns designed to prioritize safety over soul; words are a cabin in the mountains built near a faultline in the earth's crust. * * * > The world does not need words. It articulates itself > in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path > are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted. > The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being. > The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken. > > And one word transforms it into something less or other — > illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert. > Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands > glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow > arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues. > > Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot > name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. > To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper — > metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa > carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember. > > The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, > painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving > each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it. > The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always — > greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon. > > — [_Words_ by Dana Gioia][wdg] * * * Thanks for listening to Howell Creek Radio. I'm Joel Dueck. That story about me doing my math when I was seven -- I apologize if you've heard it on this podcast before. Trixie and I are both almost positive I've used it before, and yet I couldn't seem to find it in any of my past episodes, and when I asked on Twitter and Facebook, none of my listeners remembered hearing it. But just watch, someone will find it now. I blame the lapse on the numbers. I realize I've been especially unkind to numbers here, and that some people just love swimming in numbers. Statisticians, born accountants and financial analysts...I can appreciate you people. I'm just very unlike you in that respect. Again, the poem at the end there is [_Words_ by Dana Gioia][wdg], the sound of the rain was recorded on my iPhone on my front porch today. You can find notes and photos for this episode, and five years' worth of other episodes at . Stay dry. Synopsis ----------- Radio address for June 15, 2013. Numbers and words are my yin and yang, my law and grace. I'm trying to explore the parallel between numbers and incessant rain, and why is it that we even need them? Why is it that as children in school, people always seem to prefer either math or language, but never both? Mention is made of Ray Bradbury's short story [_The Long Rain_][tlr], which was included in his book [_The Illustrated Man_][tim]. Music cues are [_Midnight Sun_][msrh] and [_L'Aura_][lrh] by Richard Harvey, and [_Mayla_][mmz] by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The end music is [_I & Thou_][iatd] by The Daredevil Christopher Wright. I've actually included a link to [an MPR article about this poetic, philisophical song][ddcw] for the last few months in the email that goes out to email subscribers (speaking of which, I'll get that updated -- sorry folks!). You can also listen to the full song for free there. [tlr]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Rain [tim]: http://www.raybradbury.com/books/illustratedman-hc.html [wdg]: http://www.danagioia.net/poems/words.htm [lrh]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00304SJVK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00304SJVK&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [msrh]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00304QFH0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00304QFH0&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [mmz]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081J9QRA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0081J9QRA&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [iatd]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008FBQ91K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B008FBQ91K&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [ddcw]: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2013/02/05/arts/i-and-thou-into-the-song