Loading ...The verdict on 2006 is damning, and the hopes for 2007 are ambitious. Each shall be like their number: the 6 in danger of rolling back, a fat-bellied and thin-headed typographic mimesis of a year. But the 7 is a growling number, angular and lean, hungry with a sharp head of forward motion. The outstanding issues of the end of 2006 are pressing upon us, and for a 2007 strategy we must provide clarity on the recent past.
Where did Saddam go? The Sunni butcher of Baghdad spent the finals seconds being scorned by Shia Muslims, by having the name of a rival spat in his face: Muqtada, Muqtada! Squared off against hangmen and officiators, the tiny lenses of camera phones pointing at him, Saddam Hussein plunged through a trap door and the next thing he saw was, what? Who was waiting for him? Would St Peter smirk and point downwards? Are there no black-eyed virgins for an oppressor and mass murderer? Does God Himself usher a villain into his cell of emptiness, sheer the dyed mane into a tonsure, and give the unfortunate soul his ropes for self-flagellation? Is there a support group for tyrants of a past life? My name is Hitler, and I’m a genocidaholic. Heil, Hitler.
What did I think of New York? Like nemoDreamer before me, and Claire Messud in print form in her so-so novel The Emperor’s Children, and doubtless like many other thoughtful inductees into New York, the place seemed like immersive television. We are surrounded by so much New York wherever we are in the world, that when you finally emerge from a 14th street subway and walk into the Village, or stride with speed up Fifth Avenue, the skyscrapers extending away – steam out of manholes, the accent, the hot dogs, everything – there is a bizarre sensation of knowing exactly where one is, without knowing how to get anywhere. But it is a joyful, ebullient, noisy place. It is a glass of spilled milk: so much chaos and damage and no one crying. The faces of lifelong New Yorkers, those who are not millionaires, are scarred by the city: their skin droops dramatically, the eyes are blinded by so much sight. People eat in diners and watch the pathetic network news, consuming both without thought. Eat, eat, eat everything. It is a city that gorges on its people.
What am I doing now? There was a calling I ignored for many months. But when I look at my keyboard and I see my life scroll down a Word window, life via writing, I understand that I am bound to the disability, to the work it entails, to the uncertainty it metes out as condemnation for being bad at maths. I will do what I must, for I am even still just a novice.
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Ah my friend, if only you were good at maths you would not suffer this disability. But so it shall be; you shall play witness to the journey of words not yet typed, of sentences not yet weaved, and of substance not yet spoken, to the visible realm. They are in martial array at the departure lounge of pre-existence, waiting to give rise the leaven of mortal life.
They are exhilirated at the prospect of their descent. Let’s not have them wait.
Right now, somewhere, integers dive into a free-fall of equal ecstacy, from that same place, to the mind of a mathematician. I’ll give you her number, you should hook up.