Seven

I have to post something on 7/7/7 ... since my earliest memories, I have had as my numbers 3 and 7, and by consequence also 21. I put no store whatsoever in numerology, though I practice it on the sly in the sense that three candles is better than 2, and seven better than 6. My dear departed best friend Kurt Woodill once caught me short on this. It was a period of my life in which I was wont to light candles by night. I told him that I always had an odd number of candles lit in any given room. You must understand that Kurt was quite mad, a collector and object fetishist who instructed me in my own collecting habits. Nonetheless, he sagely intoned, and I quote, "You better watch out for that." So I have never counted candles, or any other light source, since then.

One does have to watch out for any kind of pointless obsessive behavior. It is vastly better to save one's obsessions for things that matter. Obsessiveness is not about abstraction; obsesssion is about the content of a given obsession. I like to tell the story of the lady in L.A. who collected full but discarded vacuum cleaner bags. This is a problem. Who would fault her if she collected thimbles, or salt and pepper shakers, or books. But vacuum cleaner bags ... lady, you need to get a life.

On another front, would we instruct a modern day Beethoven to seek help for his obsession? Or perhaps, better, would we just leave the poor man alone to make sweet music for the ages.

So 7/7/07 is just an accident, and it has no meaning or direct impact. But still I like the number 7.

Then there is that episode of Seinfeld where George goes nuts over the name Seven for a child that he does not have. Great name, folks. Of course, it differs from my actual first name by only one phoneme ... a "t", not to mention "ph" instead of "v" ... but I still guilelessly assert that Seven is one great name.

So here's to Seven, and to seven seven seven. And with that, we have had quite enough.