Charles Jensen | Writer

1.
It’s been over a year since I have numbered anything. I think it’s because of death. It takes away the clear order of things. There is no more causality in the world. All things are randomized.

2.
I keep going back in time, remembering something, saying, this is when it all began. This is when I knew it would happen. There are a thousand different origins, each one as legitimate as the last.

3.
The embrace of numbers signals a return to the world.

4.
I went shopping for clothes. My term: retail therapy. What I was told: you shopaholic! It was said then that everyone I know is a functional alcoholic. It’s either the disease or the cure, wouldn’t you agree?

5.
Although numbers may be ignored, once you have entered into language you may never reject it. Language owns you.

6.
My receipts: full of numbers and codes. Return policies. I always ask: how much damage can I do to this garment before you won’t take it back?

7.
You are a symbol of language. Language does not represent you.

8.
Numbers are the ultimate symbolic, possessing not only their definitive qualities (read: quantity), but mystical qualities as well. Nine is the number of full completion: it’s why, no matter how many new planets are discovered, we cannot consider our solar system more than nine planets large. Three is the almighty symbol of systems: father, son, spirit. Id, ego, superego. Larry, Moe, Curly. In architecture, the triangle is the strongest form of construction and bears more weight than any other stucture. The universe lives 3 x 3 x 3. It is a cube.

9.
Language is an inadequate signifier. This means, ultimately, that no one ever says precisely what they mean.

10.
There are things I never told you.

11.
When it comes to the world we only understand events backwards. We order events from last to first, from effect (metaphor)back through cause (metonymy). When you say, I knew this was going to happen, you’re lying. You didn’t know. You only knew that it happened, that something caused something and now you are an effect.

12.
Language is not a closed system. We perceive numbers as infinite, but it isn’t possible: everything has a vanishing point except for words. Whenever we reach the edge of it, I promise to tell you a new word, a word you’ve never heard, and that way we’ll never grow old and neither of us will ever, ever die.