ADVENT 2000

12/03/2000: in the early morning, the loose folded edge of toilet paper points to “Clean” on the discarded blue wrapper in the trash basket below it, loosely surrounded by a circle of dental floss;

12/04/2000: after writing checks while a phone call to the IRS was placed on hold, there comes into view on a cluttered desk 3 paper clips, 3 checks with no envelopes, 3 letters from the IRS regarding income tax filings, and 7 envelopes containing the checks that had just been written, when an IRS representative comes on the line, a Mrs. Hart, whose ID number is 9104912, the digits of which total 26 or 2 times the troubled 13, to direct the call to their Memphis office, to the attention of “Entity”, whose letter positions in the alphabet add to 93;

12/05/2000: 3 sets of 2 red lights on the rear of a truck and 1 set in the front, parked behind a mileage sign with a 1 visible beneath a 4; later, a square orange road sign, tilted with a corner pointing downward, almost completely covered by a black canvas, but leaving exposed a small triangle with 2 black lines of an underling message, as if the legs of an “H” or “11”, which appear to be holding up the darkness, preventing it from descending;

12/06/2000: being paged to the extension “3676” and dialing extension “3686” in error when  a voice answers, after identifying myself: “Thank you for calling; I need to see you”; the 8 of needy earth instead of the sacred “7”;

12/07/2000: the Federal Income, Medicare, and Social Security taxes for the week ending 12/06/2000 are $2372.76, the sum of whose digits is 27 which adds to 9, and  paid by phone is given the registration number of 21839755 the numbers of which total 40, the years the Israelis spent in the desert before entering the Promised Land and the days that Christ spent in the desert, remembered each year as Lent;

12/08/2000: a billboard with the advertising paper nearly destroyed by the wind and weather, whose right peeled portion forms a triangle pointing to a strip of blue still in tact, the left portion  a chaotic mess; later, 2 typographical errors appear in the proofs for “Advent 1999”: one an “a” and the other an “all”; the Almighty and phenomena, or maybe the Almighty is everything;

12/09/2000: the corner of a package of snap shots, placed at random on the kitchen table, points at a 45 degree angle to the overhead light fixture with lit 4 bulbs and 1 which is dark; later, a man takes one of the 8 ball point pens which are upright in a holder on a desk in a furniture store in Stamford  and, after examining it, puts it back at an angle to the other 7;

12/10/2000: the only keys (G,0,8,9,99,E) touched incorrectly, some twice, during data entry are significant in and of themselves, while many other letters and numbers were entered correctly;

12/11/2000: in a dream a woman must have said something about the importance of money in what seemed to be in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, in preparation for the home being sold, when I said money wasn’t important to which she replied that her children needed it. Then, I responded that it taught them the wrong things but awaking the next morning to the opposite feeling before the back door of our home that was left open all night, inviting thieves;

12/12/2000: adding the digits of a number on a license plate to 21 and then to the holy 3,  followed by the capital “C” for Christ, but on further inspection the number is 54760 which adds to 22  and then again to the contrasting 4 corners of the world; later, dialing the extension 6684 in error, when a voice said; “Sorry, wrong number”, then dialing the correct extension number 6689, the divine “9” in place of the secular “4”;

12/13/2000: a shadow as of a black incubus before the garage in the early morning when an attached flood light, which is sensitive to nearby movement, flashes on and the shadow vanishes; later, in Saint Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue, the only votive candles burning form the “J” of Jesus;

12/14/2000: 4 red neon letters of  the Shaw’s grocery store sign are on: “Sha..s”: “The Savior  arrives to a darkened world. Sing.”;

12/15/2000: the assistant typed what she thought she heard: “…causing a reduction of those investments when soul to accommodate the withdrawal…”  and then editing the  “soul” to “sold” to complete the painful clause; later, in the evening, changing lanes after deciding not to pass but to follow a white car with “62387” on the license plate, the sum of which is 19 and then is 7;

12/16/2000: early in the morning on Alston Avenue, noticing for the first time the stumps of 4 trees that had recently been cut down; later, at noon in the middle of Route 10 in Hamden a black tape about 10 feet long stuck by one end to a painted white line and fluttering gently in the breezes caused by the passing cars, which finally settles to a perfect “C” on the ground, its other tip on another white perpendicular line to form a triangle with a concave base;

12/17/2000: addressing Christmas cards with the help of an address book and spotting my mother-in-law’s name and telephone number, (203) 248-2506, with the 3 digits in the middle  divisible by 4 and flanked by the area code and the final 4, both divisible by 7; later, the sound of an ambulance siren at 12:00 noon in concert with the Sunday peal of  bells from the churches on Broadway and on the Green;

12/18/2000: in the early morning when a traffic light turns red a nearby window lights up; later, just after noon, someone hammering a stake into the ground when a bird begins to chirp after the third strike, followed by a cacophony from a passel of black crows;

12/19/2000: at night in a dream, a voice referring the a triangle of land between the Merritt Parkway, its entrance ramp, and Whalley Avenue is heard to say: “Look at that; a garden; the state took our land and prevented us from using it for industrial production”, when 3 objects appear, one with a 3 on it and each of the other 2 with a 4;    

12/20/2000: the Emergency Medical attendant is heard to say: “We have plenty of light…”,as he pushed an elderly man on a dolly out the door of the Tandet Nursing Home;

12/21/2000: a “For Sale” sign over one half of another sign with the name of the building/business to be sold, leaving “…apion” exposed, the A trashed by graffiti; the Almighty debased in peon dig;

12/22/2000: in another dream, after the arrival of a new computer as the cardboard supports are pulled from both floppy and CD ROM drives, 3 beats on an drum signal to an orchestra to begin what seems to be  a Wagner finale from a Ring opera, but the tenor sings instead “Left up your voices, the Savior has arrived…”, which he repeats, as the voice of one who will describe the initialization of the operating system begins to speak, when everything is drowned out including the dream by a loud rumble as if a show plow were plowing the street outside even though there is no snow plow outside and there is no snow; later, in Stamford a large delivery truck for the DeYulio Sausage Company with only a portion of the sign painted on the side appears

ulio’s
sage

the letters on the top in red, the bottom in blue; and, still later, pulling the car keys out of a pocket in the Stamford Hospital parking lot when 3 coins accidentally fall to the ground and  form a “C”, a few inches from a piece of black wire also shaped as a “C”;

12/23/2000: the upper right hand support for a long sign above the door of a new store announcing its opening is unhinged and folds back over everything except the “Open” in red letters in a lower left hand right triangle;

12/24/2000: a gold plastic bottle of something, maybe a detergent, falls over for no apparent reason and points to a white ball, a circle, a zero, the ineffable nothingness of a rolled up plastic bag;