numbers

[gurdonark]

Yesterday I loaded up a number of dress shirts for a trip to the dry cleaners. The dry cleaners we use has a drive-up window. "We know your number", the woman said, as she smiled and took my shirts.

People always seem to know one's number. I remember once in law school, being set up for one of the very few blind dates I ever endured. Blind dates are interesting less for the dates themselves, than for what they say about the person who sets them up. "Is this what you think of me? You think that she's the person with whom I would be compatible?". This type of thing lets one puts on those odd glasses labeled "how others see us". The view is not always intoxicating. Fortunately, like acne, the memory of blind dates tends to fade into oblivion soon, and sometimes immediately if one can avoid chocolate for a day or two. It all becomes ancient history, anyway--part of one's vestigial DNA, something nobody figured out any use for, but didn't bother to evolve out of for want of anything better to do.

I'm fond of the ability to manipulate numbers. I think one can never own enough pocket calculators, even though, thankfully, I never quite joined the pocket protector brigade in life. I love knowing how to amortize the principal and interest on mortgage payments. I was looking at one of those "lectures on tape" series, and they had a series about Calculus. I barely survived three semesters of calculus, and remember none of it. Yet I felt a kind of longing for derivation and integration. That's the story of my life--limited skills at derivation and constant longing for integration.

I used to eat frequently at an Armenian chicken restaurant in the Crescenta foothills in California. Sevan, it was called, after the large lake in Armenia. Although I went there many a day, the staff barely seemed to recognize me from time to time--and were never particularly cordial. There is a kind of solace in anonymity, I suppose--they know your order, but they don't want to know you. What is there to know, after all? Half chicken, pickled vegetables, pita. No danger of blind dates--not even gata is on offer.

Perhaps middle age is the time of "toting up". I lack some of the yardsticks for flawed personal self-assessment. We don't have kids, so I can't measure myself vicariously through their achievements. My publications are particularly mundane, so the posterity angle is out. I've been happy with my career, but there are no "front page of the legal times" kind of cases in my day-to-day life. Present value, future value, powers of ten: I can be solved in four functions or less.

Even the equations are hard to state, sometimes--a name forgotten in mid-sentence, a phrase unspoken, a
memory unearthed, and then buried again. The great google search of the soul--the desktop has thirty three references--do you want to try this "similar search?".

The second movement, d.c. coda al fine, the intercalary passage. Somehow it all adds up. Somehow the math works out.

Comments

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

When I was about twenty-four, I was working at a public library in New Orleans. It was a regional branch with about ten employees. There was a woman in her late twenties working there who was married, but she was also having an affair with the Head Librarian, a forty-something man who was a poet, and had self-published a chapbook of his work. The woman was anxious for me to go out on a date with her younger sister, a woman I'd never met. And I do mean anxious, as if she'd have a fit if I didn't do it. And so I did, went to a rock concert of some kind with her sister. Nothing, no "spark" or whatever. My coworker was disappointed that we hadn't hit it off. Ah, yes, I remember the coworker had also been insistent that I go on to a Cajun festival in Houma with her and her husband--that was before the date with her sister. That excursion was awkward and her husband seemed uncomfortable having me there, and that kind of thing has happened to me more often than being set up on blind dates. What does one call that kind of social situation? Where a married person invites a straight person of the opposite gender on a social outing with their self and their spouse? Odd. That married coworker eventually got pregnant, btw, and it was always speculated whether the father was her husband or the head librarian. (LATER: I've never written about my odd interactions with this woman. Thanks for prompting me to dredge it up. I'm going to copy and paste it into my own blog.)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what conclusions one can ever draw from any of these things, because there are so many dynamics, but I draw the conclusion that life is complicated, sometimes.

[adittya83.livejournal.com]

I'll check that out!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

:)

[missprune.livejournal.com]

I think you are one of the most interesting writers around, and I don't understand why there is not a book of your essays on my bookshelf. The way you pull together incidents and details and observations, it's quite an awesome talent, if you will forgive my lazy adjective!

[espvivisection.livejournal.com]

I think what will survive you, or any of us, is our kindness. Newspaper clippings fade or get lost; children come with their own will and cannot be made vicarious carriers of dreams without hurting them and ourselves. I think the thing that will be eternal, though, are the kindnesses you show, because the people you've helped will remember you.

And I think, whether we are Gretta Garbo or no one in particular, that's the best and most real kind of legacy any of us can hope for.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think that kindness and its relatives are the most important thing. You make an excellent point about its importance. Thanks for commenting.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

that's very kind of you!

[missaunt.livejournal.com]

I never had to endure blind dates, but I have managed through a few Internet ones. The reconciliation of the online profile with the actual person. How learning that divorced, height, occupation, education, and photos are fluid concepts. It is much like learning in the real estates ads that cozy means cramped and fixer upper means lime green shag carpeting.

I think of middle age as coming into one's own. There's a lot to be said for creativity, kindness, and altruism, and you have all three squared.