Higher Mathematics (Department of Personal Chronology)

Too many years ago now to count, I once calculated my personal “magic number.” It was pretty stupid: all I did was gather my birthdate, my phone number, my address, my ZIP code, my Social Security Number — any numbers I could think of which applied to me — and added up all their digits. Then I added up all the digits in the result, and so on, boiling it down, until I’d reduced the whole mess to a single digit. The result: 6.

I don’t remember why I did this. (Note hidden, unsupported assumption that I in fact had a reason. Surely not because I thought I could somehow use the result to improve my life?!?)

And it was, as I said, pretty stupid. No matter what else I hoped to achieve — even assuming any vaguely touchy-feely mystical validity to the exercise — who among us knows or can even find out all the meaningful numbers in his/her life? If I’d used the digits in the current time, for instance, as soon as I wrote them down (using a twelve- or twenty-four-hour clock? and in which time zone?) they’d be wrong. At that point in my life, I had both a motorcycle and a car: why not include their odometer readings, and/or their engine displacements? (But, hmm, the motorcycle’s was expressed in cubic centimeters; the car’s, in cubic inches…) Et cetera.

So I was pretty obviously confused on the whole magic-number thing. I could’ve simplified the whole project immeasurably if I’d just stopped at my birthday.

In the USA (and maybe other Western countries), the magic number for birth years is any multiple of ten: the 10th birthday, the 20th, and so on: these are all alleged to be milestone years, years in which one’s life moves into some significant next phase. The digit 0 must be considered somehow “special.” (It is special, of course: not until its introduction to our numbering system did simple arithmetic, mathematics, and hence science, really take off in the West.)

Among the staff of programmers I managed, back in the 1980s, was a young Taiwanese woman named I-Ping; she took it upon herself to educate the rest of us in some of the ways of the mysterious Orient. That constituted my first introduction to the magic of 12 and its multiples. The twelve “traditional” (Western) zodiacal signs, I already knew; but beyond casual, murky media reports of Chinese New Year parades and festivals, I didn’t know previously about the Chinese twelve-year cycle — with years designated as Year of the Dragon, Rat, Horse, Pig (or Boar), and so on.

As I’ll document in a later post, The Missus (Missus-to-Be, back then) eventually contributed further to my understanding of both forms of astrology. At this point I can tell you that if you blended them together, you might consider me a Gemini Rabbit. (The combined attributes of those two signs point to a very easily bored, not to say flea-minded — boing! boing! — individual. I’m sure I have no idea what they’re talking abou— wait, what’s that sparkly thing over there?!?)

And for those curious about which birthday this is, I’ll also say that my new age combines the Western and Chinese magic-number traditions: it’s evenly divisible by both 10 and 12. I’m sure you can do the (vaguely unnerving) math.

On this once-in-a-lifetime, once-unimaginable occasion, I offer you in celebration the opening stanza from one of E.E. Cummings’s most often quoted poems:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

And, oh hell (boing! boing!), I may as well throw in some music, too. Selected strictly for the band’s name, here are English band The Magic Numbers, with the audio version of “Take a Chance” (from their 2006 album Those the Brokes):

Lyrics*:

Take a Chance (Acoustic Version)
(by Romeo Stotard; performance by The Magic Numbers)

What you gonna do when it all breaks down
Take another heart through this lonely town?
What you gonna do when she turns around
And says, “I never, ever thought that you’d be messing ’round”?

But then you dance, dance, dance with the woman who left you
How’s it gonna feel until I catch you?
How d’ya gonna feel when she turns around
And says, “You broke another heart that was broken down”?

It’s a crying shame, that the love you’ve made
Is a cross… that you bear… when it’s cold
Why don’t you leave me alone?

Take a chance with the woman who lets you
Take a chance with the woman who lets you

How you gonna feel when it’s all found out
Chase another heart that was up and down?
What you gonna do when they turn around
And say they never ever thought that you’d be messing ’round?

But then you dance, dance, dance with the woman who lets you
How’s it gonna feel until I catch you?
How you gonna find what she had in mind?
If you keep tearing back the pages with an alibi

It’s a crying shame, that the love you’ve made
Is a cross… that you bear…
It’s a crying shame that the love you’ve made
Is a cross… that you bear… when it’s cold
Why don’t you leave me alone?

Take a chance with the woman who lets you
Take a chance with the woman who lets you
Take a chance
Take a chance…

What you gonna do when it all breaks down
Chase another heart that’s been broken down?
What you gonna do when she turns around
And says, “I never, ever thought that you’d be messing ’round”?

But then you dance, dance, dance with the woman who lets you
What you gonna do until I catch you?
How you gonna feel when she turns around
And says, “You broke another heart that was broken down”?

It’s a crying shame, that the love you’ve made
It’s a crying shame, that the love you’ve made
It’s a crying shame, that the love…
…won’t leave you alone

____________________

* I found numerous versions of the song’s lyrics online, differing slightly in sound but significantly in sense — e.g., the woman who lets you vs. the woman who left you. I think the above is close to correct for this acoustic performance, but let me know if I’ve gotten something wrong!