4:44 4.12.10

4:44 4.12.10
Could I break my life down into numbers? 31. 26. 1. 79. 7. 5. 80,000. 98. Age, birth day, month, year, favorite number, lucky number, number of travel miles it took to get me around the world for free this summer. It is 4:44 on 4.12.10 and no moment is like the next. The national debt is in the trillions and is rising at rate I can’t write to keep up with or believe; my students are more numerous (98+) and more wonderful than they were 2 weeks ago; the rainy season has begun in Colombia, two down pours in three days and the soccer game across the river goes on despite the billions of raindrops; the score remains steady 5 - 2.
Now it is 4:52. And one little boy just rang my doorbell. He needed help translating a song from English; it was about a monkey that eats 33 bananas for breakfast, 33 bananas for lunch and 33 bananas for dinner. His favorite number is 99, mine is seven. Every instant tallied and counted, calculated and different. Like each raindrop and each little boy, a universe in itself gets lost in the crowd. The moments, when they fall like rain, become a torrent, a raging river that drowns out the sound of even the jet plane overhead. But each raindrop still floats, bouncing and darting down the canyon, part of the whole, a new creature, like people in a crowd, they swell and push as if one. Each moment, delicate as a flower and powerful enough to sweep you off your feet.