Wednesday, February 18, 2009

wandered lamb-like

I’ve been very busy with numbers. It’s not a one-sided thing – we’ve both needed some organizing. I was at parents’ night for my son’s class last night. Of 33 parents, 22 were women, and of those six had dyed their hair blond. It’s very original. Even one of the fathers dyed his hair blond. And part of his beard. It’s contagious. Designing pie charts was the only thing that saved me from parents' night tedium. Even words are taking a backseat these days. For example, describing the 5th graders, the teacher used the word lammfromm. This means pious, or meek, as a lamb. But the interesting thing about lammfromm is how many Ms come in the package. Four out of nine letters. What’s that, 44%? Some words seem more like numbers than words. They’re solutions to problems. Lammfromm, for example, is gorgeously symmetrical and could be the answer to a lot of the world’s long, multi-tiered problems. For starters, it would take us far in peace agreements.

Anyway, if you’ve been trying to reach me, even telepathically, I’ve been busy calculating.

4 comments:

Ron. said...

All night long only numbers
and dreams of numbers
and in the frozen morning
—new snow on all the branches—
I’m filled with numbers still:
readout on the oil tank
the wattage of the feeble lightbulb
what part of the pound of coffee’s left
until I’m drifting in an avalanche
of other numbers
too dread to reckon.

Five new inches of snow
at the end of March
the month going out
like a lion on all fours
temps in the single digits.
Five new inches of snow
and the moon’s gone around the frogpond
almost four times
since the first of the first of the first.

SarahJane said...

I really like that, Ron.
Was that published somewhere, I hope, besides here in my comment drawer?

Anonymous said...

The entry reminds me of Revolution Road.

Are we destined to be watching the lint accumulate in our navels ?

Lisa Nanette Allender said...

Love this, SarahJane. And Ron's poem, above, too.
Very touching, and contemplative.

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