7

it is June 5th 10:07 am and the unmanned computer at the library desk i should be stationed at sends me a series of four messages:

%

7

7

7

i am driving and have google maps open even though i drive this route often and should know it by now. “should” but don’t and won’t apologize. i glance at my phone notifications each time, a little puzzled and wondering who i am friendly enough with at work to be exchanging prank texts with. i pull a few faces in my mind but i am not convinced.

on arrival, a passing coworker says “oh, it’s the RFID scanner picking up phantom readings at the desk”. they’re very casual about it. it happens sometimes. like it happens sometimes that a ghost locks themselves in the public, all-gender/family bathroom for hours while patrons shuffle about, needing some place to relieve themselves. “patron” is another funny service word for person. and “person”, i think, is a funny earth word for a small, unconscious god. i think, though sometimes i cannot find reason for this. and god is dog backwards and who really, actually cares about words and numbers and symbols and their meanings anyway?

i look at my coworker and laugh because i feel that i have perhaps made an angelien friendbot who is now generating random access numbers while i dance my daily chaos dance of “just try to get there on time”. there, being anywhere. i haven’t had a proper sense of time since 1999 and i am dancing my traffic choreography when i would rather be in bed. a truth is a truth if i know it as such.

11:07 pm

time is an illusion and i am home now, after a day of wardrobe malfunctions, tooth pain and dangerous ideation in boots that i love but are hard on my feet and hips. i am STILL thinking about seven hundred and seventy seven percent and what that could mean. invested as i am in meaning-making, i search this on my phone- a smaller friendbot from whom i could honestly use a break. i search 777 and pull up on my screen, random “new age” websites and a place in Pomona that i might make a randonautic experience out of. i don’t hold myself to this and will likely forget… chaos memory. temporary true things, a little brain glitch and so on and such.

the other day i was researching memory wheels. in the chaotic way that i research anything- i have 307 tabs open on my phone browser, some months old. i think i do these things, yes, to make meaning… AND also to escape the meanings of days like july 4th that just passed with its explosives and smoke and unreal patriotism. I try to enjoy the lights, to enjoy the people, not patrons, that i am surrounded by, and to trick my brain into believing the gestures and flags and fireworks mean nothing unless i make them. i try. then i cry and fall asleep.

anyway,

7 in triplicate and in percentage%

that’s a lot of recreational math for a coincidence or a distraction. i may not be using the word coincidence appropriately here but it feels fitting. or filling. you know, the way triple 7 fills a lucky slot machine. the last screenshot on my phone is a still of a video telling me that July 5th would be a lucky day. tell that to my ripped pants and shoes this morning- maybe bursting out of my work costume is a lucky sign. who really, actually knows about good luck and bad luck or if we’re always already making our own way?

it is july 6th now and somehow this story of a few paragraphs has spanned 3 days and i am sure to have lost you along the way. i still do not know who you are and i am only waiting for 12:07 am so that i can send into the ether this response to their peculiar message:

10:07

11:07

12:07

anyway,

to 7, chaos, and luck.

good, bad and everything in between.