Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

He asked to accompany us, which was to accompany the current. He asked if the people from, he mentioned an acronym, DBA, had mentioned his proposal. Wind shattered everything into acronyms. The current switched. He talked about DCents, talked siting, the top six concerns, top four concerns, energy costs, cooling. He was familiar with our specs. We sped up and put trees between us. Transmissions lost efficacy with spatial gain. Information over distance weakened as like a voice, an echo. All that buffered us was green.

He caught up on the hilltop, laid out his proposal as like the vista. There were realestate opportunities, he said, also religious preservation opportunities. There was a chance to ensure a bold future for the kakuchi, by investing in the surrounding grounds. Someone was going to do it, and a monk was a someone, if he had to be. If Tetration purchased certain lots from the Ishikawa Bureau of Land Development, and DCentered them, contracting with TBA, or TBD, or breeze, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry would surely accelerate efforts to convert the nuclearplant to geothermals. Electricity would be green, cheap, and just below us, a mangly contamination of oxidized pumps and pipes, a single siren spinning mute light. The whole peninsula would benefit, Kanazawa especially. The Master Classman too, who would receive a fee for the brokerage.

He told us to meditate on it. For serious he told us. We were still atop the hill but facing the mountains. Then he was gone, smacks of rain and righteous sandals.

The massive trees were dripping, had us missing Palo Alto. A scurry through the branches had us recalling that primates were the only mammals whose behavior did not predict tsunamis. Only mammals besides humans. Fact, no fact ever contradicted a tree.

We made our way down to the beach. The descent steepened us into feeling as like we could leap and begin again, we could just jump and land, splash stars or sand. Startover. The tideline was vast with trash, wet reactor core trash, washing in and out and in. But just beneath us on the slope and tangled in shrub was a runningshoe, a neon and 10 other types of fading yellow runningshoe, gel midsole/heel, meshed vamps crisscrossed with kelp and logo bolts, all phylon pronating lacelessness. This is immaterial. It was just us out in the rain above a single runningshoe. A moment. Not kensho, not satori, this was just being conscious, aware. This was our maturity. Our disabuse. A discarded runningshoe out in the midst of nature was our nature. We held a culm of bamboo, reached for the shoe, struggled to unshrub it and slid, but it was as like a misty vine binding all the culms hauled us up and steady again. We reached into our rakusu for the cylinder, fitted it down into the shoe and under the tongue and then, aiming for the rainy waves, we chucked it, and whether it even made the waves is immaterial.

We had the oshō drive us to the station, took a train for Kanazawa. The Ishikawa Bureau of Land Development informed us that all Shinto shrines were owned by the prefectural government. Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist temples and monasteries were the property of their respective sects, all except the kakuchi we were cur about. In 1992, Sōtōshu Shumucho, the official body of the sect, had deaccessioned the kakuchi, and put it up for auction, citing reservations about its proximity to the new nuclear powerplant in Shika. It was purchased by a company of gaijin, Americant Unholding, S.H., which traded on its history and shukyo hojin, religious nonprofit, status but staffed it with unaccredited monks and even laypeople and operated it as like a tourist enterprise, eliciting complaints from Sōtō roshi in Fukui and Hyōgo. But the Sōtōshu Shumucho practiced detachment, the prefecture refused to get involved. Americant Unholding, S.H., was registered in Tokyo. We took a train to Tokyo.

The current owner was the half Japanese, half Sacramento exwife of the Master Classman, a cosmetic surgery nurse with her own taxes in arrears. She had won the kakuchi in the divorce in 96, kept the Master Classman as like director out of mawkishness and torpor, but given how paltry and sporadic the transfers had become was now convinced he was skimming. We called Gutshteyn collect from her pebble garden, got Carbon or Keiner to recommend a local lawyer to negotiate purchase and structure the deal. We installed the oshō and shike in cocharge with the sole stipulation that they let the Master Classman stay on as like an unsui. Basically, the Master would become the student, but he refused and so had to be escorted off the premises. Immaterial. After our death kakuchi ownership will revert to its board in perpetuity, immaterial. We emailed Kor who rented a plane for us and already in midair we decided we would purchase one too, a better one, and an airport. You are still wondering about the source of the ashes. Whether Classman or Kor. But we are too. Fall 2000.

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Buddhist calendars are lunisolar and delay their approach to our secular time, adding extra months only every approx 20 years. Hindu calendars are lunisolar too but keep up with ours in realtime, adding days to weeks as like necessary, adding weeks to months as like necessary, each with their own unbooley appellative. The fundamental unit of the Hindu clock is the breath. In Buddhism it is the thought, or nonthought, because time is actualized only in its absence.

The turn of the century procrastinated, lagged, as like we did. 2001 was the millennium returned. The cable channels had transmitted the fall of Wall, and of the Soviet sputnik satellites, by satellite. The towers went down pure online.

[Speak for yourself.]

We do.

[OK, fuck it, where were you when?]

We were with you, that is the salience. We were the pressed suit and tie plunging curbward and the rubbled pit janitor crying refresh. We were every impatient pick at the groin while the footage was still loading. Every on the clock officewide click.

[But what about you physically?]

It was 06:00 on a Tuesday morning, physically. We had been awake all night. We had a foreboding. That something would prevent the delivery, that something would prevent the enjoyment, of a never plugged in 1984 Bally Midway Spy Hunter arcade console. Not the standup but the sitdown fully immersive cockpit version. Which was finally delivered to us, but not fully enjoyed, at noon.

[Fuck you, but I was always a fan of the pinball version.]

But the tower events were not just online, they were all communications. More sites, more gadgets, more wars. More of the government seeking to resolve domestic policy abroad and in the process merely finding new markets for us and not even requesting a kickback, at least not directly. All this was just collateral damage.

Kor called it, called each new product launch, “Bringing democracy to the Arabs.”

But the for serious offline impact of 09/11 was the continual contact, continuous contact, it encouraged. On 09/12 everyone went out and bought phones. The mobiles, the cells. Suddenly, to lose touch was to die, and the only prayer left for anyone who felt buried whether under information or debris was for a signal strong enough to let their last words outlive them on voicemail.

Nothing had indicated this. There were no predictions. Take a small elite cadre trained to dev a plan, keep it quiet, then go big on release. The results had to be instructive.

Buying out blogging platforms, to neutralize or plagiarize into the one your wife uses. Turning the toil of others our own or just profit. We were good at it and glad we were good at it. We found we had this penchant for business and happiness.