Utopic Moments
By Michele Sereda
She sits in her kitchen. The time of day is early morning, refreshed from a night’s sleep.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the garden.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the grass.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the aged bird house.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the apple tree.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees a rabbit hop into her yard. She looks out from the window and before her she sees the garden.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the grass
Contemplating the day.
Her chest rises and falls with her breath and she starts to play with numbers in her mind. Adding them up
2 0 6 0, equals 8
1 7, equals 8
2 2 1 6 equals 2
2 8 6 equals 7
1 1 4 4 equals 1
The house numbers she’s lived at. Her favourites are 2 0 6 0 and 1 7 because they add up to the number 8. The number known to some as infinity. The circular loop, the spiral like rubrix ladder of DNA. Not an infinity number like pie, you know, or 3.14 that everyone talks about that goes on randomly forever suggesting it’s the answer to natures curve. But she likes 8 as her infinity. An infinity that is an enclosed circuit, a loop. Her fingers trace the loop in the air, a conductor tracing time.
Cumulous clouds sit in the air against a blue sky. A small breeze gently tickling the leaves in the trees while the moon from the night still hangs in the air.
2 0 6 0
1 7
has a different ring than
2 2 1 6
or
1 1 4 4 East 2 2
though the last one may become a favorite.
But her blood level rises more on the first two.
After her contemplative moment of numbers she walks over to the kitchen counter to make a cup of coffee. Methodically measuring the medium roast of ethically ground coffee picked by workers who were paid a fair fee. A fair fee for labour. She wonders if they were happy picking. Did they enjoy this labour? Was it a labour of love? This labour of love that fuels most of us to start our day. The adrenaline rush, that goes into our blood to create the moment of where each cell and molecule vibrates. She’s only a tea drinker in the afternoon.
2 0 6 0
1 7
Breastfeeding, orgasm, mother’s in labour, natural connections of closeness.
Equals 8
The water in the kettle boils. Stirring her from her thought. She unplugs it and pours it over the coffee grains housed in her ceramic funnel lined by ethically manufactured coffee filters. The filter isn’t bleached. The moon is slowly dissolving into the blue sky as the white cumulous clouds hang effortlessly as the day keeps moving on.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the garden.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the grass.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the aged bird house.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the apple tree.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees a rabbit hop into her yard.
It reminds her of the stock exchange, trading, and the people who work for these large corporations. CAPITAL.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the garden.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the grass
Contemplating the day.
2 0 6 0
1 7
1 1 4 4 East 2 2
Economics is the future. Star gazing is the future.
We hold onto to them as agents of currency hugging each tightly.
We shake hands with it. We stare into each other’s eyes to check the balance.
We read and trade each other.
And when we are in Neptune and Saturn’s retrograde it can cause confusion or make us become even more stubborn, not willingly to move or negotiate. Celestial bodies being the navigators that cause upheavals, floods, revolutions, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, drought, monarch butterflies dying out, cell phones killing bees, changing circumstances amidst the pouring of coffee and water. We circle in tight making room only for the select few, the circle appearing to enlarge but when someone tries to wiggle in a level of uncertainty appears. Suspicion. We wonder who do we trust, where do we let our generosity lie. Do we give to the beggar on the street? Which charity do we donate to? Does it have meaning? The leisure society of giving stretching the palm of generosity in a tight circle when we know who feels the glow with us. We feed each other when we feel good.
2 0 6 0
1 7
equals 8.
Alone. The shot is in full view. She gazes into people’s eyes and an imaginary blue line connects them. A long blue thread for six seconds that stretches from eye to eye that goes directly into the iris to the back of the head. Water drops in a sink near by. The sound of children’s voices echo in her mind. All walking on a blue line.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
The gaze continues. A soft focus, a lense of simple activity. She takes her pulse. First she tries her wrist. Then she tries her neck. She goes back to her wrist. It feels more accurate. She doesn’t use her index finger but the other two but she can’t find it on her wrist. So she goes back to the neck. And counts her resting heart rate after the infinite gaze. 69.
6 9 equals 6
Six degrees of separation. Six degrees of separation.
She shakes hands with herself and takes her pulse again.
First she tries her wrist. Then she tries her neck. She goes back to her wrist. It feels more accurate. She doesn’t use her index finger but the other two closest to the pinkie but she can’t find it. So she goes back to the neck.
She loses count. And tries again.
She waits one minute.
66.
6 6 equals 3
She hugs herself. For eight seconds.
Measurements of time. Calculated. Tested.
70.
equals 7.
While she tests her heart rate her mind floats with a image of nothingness. An abyss, a calm serene even patience. She thinks of someone she wishes to love. It surprises her that the last heart rate is 7. But she likes that number and it doesn’t bring her anxiety. She likes the way it sounds, it’s an odd number. Not rounded, it has a mystical application.
Measurements of time. Calculated. Tested.
She goes to her back door and opens it. Out stretches a never ending montage of petals falling from the sky. Fresh white apple petals lifted by the wind and swirling, drifting throw the air. The scent of them feels sharper.
Water drops in a sink near by.
2 0 6 0 equals 8
1 7 equals 8
2 2 1 6 equals 2
2 8 6 equals 7
Purple teletubbies flash by.
She finds a piece of paper, and a thin black sharpie pen that she bought at the office supply store. She takes a ruler and makes a graph with thin lines from her sharpie. The sharpie feels cool among her hands. She makes three columns at the top of the page.
The moon comes back still hangs in the air among the cumuolous clouds.
Gazes. Hugs. Handshakes.
Full block letters. Capital letters.
She takes her time, perfecting how each letter is shaped, following the curve of the G, then moving to the straight lines of the A, the apex that gets cut in the middle. Z a combination of straight inside a curve, ending with three directional lines the making of E. One long straight line. Three short lines that gaze out.
She takes her heart rate again. Addicted to it like Glenn Gould was to blood pressure.
64
6 4 equals 1.
The Beatles sang one is the loneliest number that could ever be.
Godard’s one wasn’t a matter of left or right, white or black.
Soft focus. A simple lense of activity. A Full shot.
She continues to make the next letters, with precision hugs, handshakes.
Full block letters. Capital letters.
The sun streams down onto the paper lighting it with a white luminous light.
A beam ever so warm. Ever so gently stretching for miles and miles and miles catching up to Neptune and Saturn. Venus hanging in the air with the moon.
Star galaxies gazing back at us.
She steps out her back door, the wind picks up and the graph on the table lifts it ever so gently and floats out the window, out the door
2060 equals 8
1 7 equals 8
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the garden.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the grass.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the aged bird house.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the apple tree.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees a rabbit hop into her yard. She looks out from the window and before her she sees the garden.
She looks out from the window and before her she sees the grass
Contemplating the day.