a society of interpretation
107 107 107
fear 107 is a large word
for a small thing.
Counted carefully, it is only a number.
The dark is just arithmetic that has not been done yet.
We did ours. We suggest you do the same.
1ah. it's just you…
Say it, and it swells. A word spoken in the dark takes the dark for a body; it grows shoulders, then patience, then a place directly behind you. It grows arms the way a thought grows doubts — more than it needs, longer than it should. This is well documented. This is the oldest arithmetic there is.
So we made a quiet trade. Everything that waited behind us, everything with too many hands and a smile it borrowed from somewhere dark — we stopped naming it, and we started counting it. A number cannot swell. A number cannot smile. A number sits where you put it, like furniture.
Ours came to one hundred and seven. It has not moved since. We check. Nightly.
(interpretation, they call it. we call it bookkeeping.)
2i'm glad you came.
Names are doors, and doors are invitations. Whatever stands at yours, however wide it smiles, do not introduce yourself. It already knows you; the courtesy would be wasted.
Count anything long enough and it becomes furniture. Count the breaths it takes from you, the corners it prefers, the arms it keeps growing, the hours it keeps. Stop at one hundred and seven. Everything fits in one hundred and seven, if you fold it correctly.
Counted things are patient. Set the number down in the grass and walk away at an ordinary pace. Do not run. Running is a form of applause, and it has always loved an audience.
5you… you couldn't have done it.
6it was something behind you… wasn't it?
Visitors see a field, a farmhouse, a well. Members see the shelving. Every count ever completed rests out there in the grass, neat as headstones, light as arithmetic, and the grass grows around them politely, the way hair grows around a scar. The door stands apart from the house because some sums prefer their own room.
fig. 1 — the field, rendered from memory. the memory insisted on the door.
7can you see it, ///////?
"I used to be afraid of the dark. Now the dark and I are afraid of the same thing, which is almost companionship."
member no. 041
"They taught me to count. I reached one hundred and six, and something finished the count for me, very gently, in my own voice."
member no. 093
"Mine is much smaller now. It fits inside the number. The number is heavy, but it has handles."
member no.107106
8where are you going? stop trying to leave.
9something is following you, ///////. i'll get rid of it once and for all.
counts completed — 106 of 107
10everything is going to be okay…