Ben's Unity
John L. Waters
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Ben's Unity
John L. Waters
January 29, 2001
Copyright 2001 by John L. Waters. All Rights
Reserved
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While out on a jog along the beach it occurred to Ben
that he'd passed over a very large number of sand
grains. Next he realized that since his fetal heart
started beating he'd experienced a very large number
of heartbeats.
It was a bright morning in mid-July, the perfect day
for Ben to enjoy the beach wearing nothing except his
socks, his running shoes, his briefs and his blue
shorts. The college student felt so energetic! He
thought of running a hundred miles.
The blond twenty-year-old glanced out over the water
and felt his vision being drawn to the thin line where
sky and water meet. "Blue is blue." he thought, as he
felt each foot pound the moist beach, left, right,
left, right, one, two, one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, and on and on the man went, feeling more
numbers come. He continued counting his footfalls.
As Ben reached three thousand twenty four, with an
audible pop an oily blob struck him on his right
biceps. The student broke his stride and the numbers
stopped coming.
"Seagull shit." he muttered. The thin blond picked
up some moist sand in his left hand, rubbed off the
turd and rinsed his hand in the surf. Then he began
running again.
A hundred yards down the beach Ben thought about his
own shit and how he had to take a number of bites and
chew a brick of cheese thoroughly as he ate it. Then
he thought about the number of globules of fat in one
eight ounce glass of whole milk. Ben realized that
everything is made up of a number of smaller things
like his own body is made up of billions of tiny
cells. Then he thought of his brain and about his
consciousness. And he wondered why he'd never thought
much about counting numbers before.
The wharf at Oceanside was fifty yards to the south
when Ben thought again that blue is blue. He saw a
blue Corvette and a blue Mustang parked in a crowded
lot in amongst red cars, black cars, and cars of other
colors. Then Ben saw a blue beach umbrella and a tall
brunette woman dressed in a blue bathing suit. He
recalled his own shorts. He saw the sky and the water
and thought the third time that blue is blue.
It was seventy two minutes after Ben had started
running before he realized that the color blue is
defined by counting the rhythmic beats produced by the
emitter of the blue light. "Our eyes seeing blue are
just counting the number of vibrations in the light we
see as blue," the student muttered. Then Ben thought
of a musical note as he heard the siren of a distant
police car. "It's the same with hearing." he mused.
"Our ears are counters. Subconsciously,
unconsciously, we're just arithmeticians. What we
sense is the number of things." Then a short poem by
Robert Louis Stevenson rang in his head:
"The world is so full of a number of things, I think
we should all be as happy as kings."
Still within sight of the Wharf, Ben's left shoe
struck a half-buried cobblestone. He stumbled and
fell.
He was three hundred yards from the nearest person.
Tensing his left leg in an effort to move caused a
sharp pain to shoot up to his hip. He lay still and
felt the water soaking through his shorts. He'd never
fallen on a run before.
After five minutes Ben managed to stand and hobble
eastward to the base of a hundred foot cliff. The man
sat down and leaned back. The shale was sharp, and he
had no shirt to protect his back. He took off his
shoes and his shorts and made a pad to rest his back
against. His briefs shone white against the brown of
his suntanned legs and belly.
Ben had been resting there for twenty-seven minutes
when a crow lit down and started hopping in his
direction. Ben counted the hops. Thinking diverted
the young man from his pain and his predicament. The
bird executed forty-three hops and then flew away.
Ben put his shorts back on and walked a hundred and
ten feet closer to the water. He lay down on the sand
face up. The student leaned his head on his running
shoes placed with the soles flat against the sand.
This made a soft cushion. Ben gazed up into heaven's
vault.
As Ben lay on the warm sand he thought about how it
felt when he was running. He knew he couldn't feel
that way again that day. His pain was still
considerable. But warm sand and bright sunshine were
a comfort. He thought he'd better thumb a ride back,
and pay the generous person after they got back to his
car. With the main problem solved in theory, and
aware from the position of the sun that it was about
noon, Ben told himself not to worry. He relaxed and
let heavenly warmth soothe his body.
For two hours Ben lay basking. He envisioned a boy
learning to count by hopping like a crow and reciting
the number names in the correct order. "But that's
not recognizing unity enough," Ben said to himself.
"The human body expresses unity at each hop, same as
the crow's body expresses unity at each hop. But the
crow's unity doesn't get obscured by all those other
number names and by learning how to do arithmetic
problems." Ben suddenly realized that crow was a
teacher he needed to meet, and that stumbling rock was
a guide to help him find that teacher.
"Hey. I understand unity!" Ben almost shouted. Then
Ben stood up, brushed the sand off his legs and arms,
and looked up the beach.
The closest people, almost a thousand feet away,
walked bird-like near the Pavilion and the Wharf.
Heat rising off sand and pavement set them all
shimmering in a mirage. Ben began walking slowly in
that direction. But he didn't count his steps.
7:46PM Friday, January 26, 2001
John L. Waters
johnlwaters@yahoo.com
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