The Generosity of Numbers

I like the generosity of numbers, the way they fill pages with their flourishes and tails, the way their eyes pop open or close tight, and their strict lines, too, their parallel bars at times, their intersections and severe cross-hatchings, as if they're saying All is precision. All may be counted. And indeed, they tally up the waves and wind, the barometric undulations of our elemental days. How thrilling! How generous indeed. And what if we'd lost them in a funk? Where would we be? Driving who knows how many miles per hour. Enduring how many or how few degrees F or C. We'd never measure up, now, would we? Or take the book, the best line, the quotation we savor with all our might, and now we cannot find the page which numbered would deliver us from the fate of the lost soul at sea—in a world without numbers. Oh yes, they are our boat, our craft, the leaping dolphin, too, or three, or twenty-seven. They are the days of the week, most thoughtful of them! The minutes and the years...