Little World

I look at the number on the screen, glowing solidly, confident in its existence although it had no reason to be-- it had no cause to exist.

I look at the number and feel the warm glow of apprehension that accompanies any moment that flutters between a decision to belief or to not. I look at the number on the screen like I look at the little worlds I create with little sketches and poems, like the little worlds in my little black notebook. I reach for the book now, instinctively sliding my hand in my bag for something to clutch onto, for something tangible and yet still richly imbued with some energetic magic. Magic that bubbles into form with no explanation or apparent source.

Where did the number blinking steadily up from the ATM screen begin to exist? Where did it first find its life? And how did it end up here, on this screen, flickering boldly like a quiet beacon cutting through gray city light? Why here? Here in the belly of this digital piggy bank? My digital piggy bank! Of all the floating, bodiless piggy banks in the world! Mine? Could it be real? And if it could be, how? And why? And from where?

Weaving slyly through the incoherent ensemble of questions clattering against each other in my mind, a new and urgent thought danced (at first playfully, and then powerfully) to the forefront of my mind. This new question quieted the clamoring chaos of my short-circuiting brain's desire for rationality; my habitual need for logic's discontented frenzy. This new question subsumed the inconsequential whine of the ensemble with its singular importance. The hows and whys and from wheres of these zeros did not matter. What did the zeros promise? The zeros-- more zeros than my account has ever known, all neatly stacked up next to each other-- held a promise. A promise that is inarticulable and indisputable. That is enormous and hugely important. The zeros held the promise of worlds undiscovered-- the promise of worlds not yet born.

What worlds do these zeros hold?

I feel intimidated suddenly, thinking about breaking the neat row of zeros into other, less perfect numbers. What is the first increment of a birth? What stroking through best ruptures potential into actuality? And is the number real? Why? How?

Are these unborn worlds mine to midwife? Am I capable?

A disgruntled line of two people, a man clad in a gray suit and an elderly woman clutching a checkbook suspiciously, has formed behind me as I hover, suspended between the realms of belief and disbelief, between hesitation and action. I turn back to the screen. I had not come here to withdraw or make a deposit, only to check my balance (phone shut off, rent due).

Feeling the line shuffle impatiently, I unwrap my hand from the little black notebook I’ve been clenching onto as an anchor, and who is the only other witness to the appearance of these phenomenal and mysterious zeros.

$20,000. (Could it be? How? And why? And from where?)

Without a thinking, my hand moves, asking the machine for a twenty in cash. I wait in breathless anticipation, as a child waits for a gumball after twisting a quarter into the great unknown bowels of a gumball machine.

And then, with a robotic cough, it appears.

If it were gum it would be sour apple green, but sun faded and stale from its time spent waiting, suspended in the belly of some neglected gumball machine in a untraversed crevice of the world.

A twenty dollar bill; framing Andrew Jackson’s manic eyeballs, which glared up at me as if to say:

“You wanted something real baby, something to hold in your hands... well here I am! ”

He glowers menacingly, trying to get in my head, to corrupt my fingers into vessels of his will-- but he isn’t the one in charge of this world I am building with the zeros. No. Not this time!

This time I am the one with the pen, with the paper, with the zeros.

He is the one who is flat, who is fragmented, who is powerless.

This time he is not in control of the body containing him. He is just some Flat Stanley knock off and pissed about it! Green and envious of my body, he meekly attempts to excavate my power with his eyes and implications. He wants it for himself. No! Not this time! This time the magic power stored in the crisp green paper belongs to me and to my world.

I take the twenty dollar bill and slide it between the worn pages of my little black notebook, blending two kinds of magic together in their most tangible forms. As I move from the ATM onto the streaming sidewalk, I wonder how far apart the trees that grew and gave life to these magic papers were.

Or maybe their trees were very close. Maybe these papers had known each other before, in tangled roots and kissing leaves, in different forms, different worlds. Maybe these papers came from the same tree and have been yearning for this return, to each other, to orgin, to wholeness. Maybe these worlds of the past, long gone now, have always been echoing softly into the tunnel of time in a resonant plea for articulation that is felt long before it is heard, and long after it is gone. Maybe, maybe, maybe... loops endlessly around my mind as I shift through the current of people on the sidewalk towards the bus stop.

And again, cutting through the ensemble of maybes-- what world could my newfound money magic and my trusty old black notebook magic, rubbing their bodies together in my bag, create? What life hums expectantly in anticipation of its birth? And how can I, another tangible container of infinite worlds, midwife this birth? This tiny new world fluttering urgently unborn from the magic paper in my bag?

Could new worlds undo old ones? Could a return to wholeness unravel the power of past worlds and their vibrating fragments? Could Andrew’s fragmented face be thrown against the unseen legacy of his world and like a meteor shower thrown from the universe, chip away at the exoskeleton of his lingering presence?

On the bus now, I open my little black book and begin to draw a new landscape. I begin to realize, as the bus rattles I along, that the magic of paper works like a chemical reaction. The black book is an amorpha of water-- lush and malleable; contained. The new paper, the paper of gumballs and zeros and trees and presidents, is white hot, a tiny and resilient flame burning on the end of an invincible match. When it is dipped into the amorpha of my little black notebook, it raises the kinetic energy and converts the static lushness of the water into ephemeral steam that rises. Something powerful is exorcised. A djinn sways from the bottle, the invisible border separating wet ideas from kinetic realities is undone. The child moves from womb to world with a miraculous gasp.

Tears fall from my eyes, a new wetness all my own jostled down my cheek and into the ocean of my notebook’s supple page.

My book! My magic! My womb! My garden!

I water it because I cannot help but to. I laugh at myself because I cannot help but to. This birth is beautiful and it is funny. Like in that TV show about people who don’t know they are pregnant until their baby is staring up at them from the toilet, I had no idea my little black notebook and I were holding a life in our bellies until our water broke on my bank account.

Through the tears and awe flowing from my eyes, I look up from the magic on my lap and out the window of the city bus. Some past passenger had carved two names and connected them with a heart into the plexiglass. Someone else had carved a lopsided phallus. The sidewalk of the world moving around outside the bus streamed with an infinite flow of bodies, moving in an improvised dance with each other.

My magic vibrates against my lap with the bumps of the road, and I feel its energy as it moves from the paper through my body. I am birthing the little world I have always contained. The magic of zeros and of paper and of little black notebooks and of me flow like the tears down my cheek, like the bodies on either side of the street. And laughing again, I know, as much as I know anything, that each body I see out the window, all the bodies that sat in this seat of the bus, are all containing these unborn worlds. Worlds that have been moving towards their birth for as long as bodies have existed. As long as there are little books to contain and create, and little fires of mysterious zeros to ignite, and bodies to midwife-- there are little worlds bursting forth energetically and mysteriously. The bus rattles to a stop and I stand up, moving forward to create my magic, to birth my world.