2 + 3 + 7 = 12, 1 + 2 = 3
2 x 3 x 7 = 42
237 / 3 = 79
3 x 237 + 711
This number, 237, has followed me through my time. It took many years for me to accept that this is so. The more attention I paid, of course the more it appeared, until it's become ludicrous. I've now got it tattooed on my back in mayan glyph. This node itself, is a 237 moment. I've no idea how I created it, before I had any intent to node it appeared. Of course.(update: I've been informed by those who can see such things that this node was, in fact, created by another user, not myself, by accident. I am both pleased by this, and a little bemused with the idea that I assumed I had created it.) These are those moments. I've had three phone numbers now with those digits. Admittedly, the one of them I asked for, but when I moved last year, my new prefix? 237. In my previous home, my voter registration roll number was 237. I went to vote, they said, "Your number is 237." I said, "I know." I'll take more time, and fill more space with 237s. I'm thankful I have a place to fix them in resonance with .... everything.
So where did it come from, this 237? I first begain to notice the number while in High School. I had a digital clock, one of the old kind with the little plastic number flaps that flop down to display each numbered minute. I'd wake up in the night, enough nights to notice, and the clock would say 2:37. I had to wonder, why 2:37? In later years I developed a theory.... perhaps the plastic flap for the 37 made some kind of sound while clicking into place, maybe enough to wake me enough to see the time.
So I began to notice the 237s. I enjoyed them, collected them from newspaper articles, puked by the side of Hwy 237 when I'd cut my hand open on a knife. I'd feel a sudden need to know the time, and find it was 2:37. The curiosities continued. I found that other people had numbers in their lives, that seemed to trail them, in some sort of significance. Don Joyce, of Negativland, had an obsession with the number 17. He pointed out that there is a moebius effect in having a number in your life...the more you notice it, the more it appears. Being more aware of it doesn't make it come 'round more often, you just notice what otherwise you might not.
10/2/01
My daughter turned fourteen this week, and her Granny bought her a cell-phone. We had it activated, and behold, her phone number is 555-2378. There is no other possibility, it seems. When I was twenty, a dear friend of mine died in a solo car wreck. We'd been close for years, confidantes. I went to see his body on the day he died. In the room he was in, there were two clocks, one analog and with the correct time. The other, digital, of the old-fashion flap kind, said 2:37.
Mayor George Moscone of San Francisco was shot to death by Dan White in room 237 of city hall. This has not a thing to do with me.
10/5/01
Ordered a book from Alibris called Badge and Buckshot, all about early lawmen and outlaws in the west, mainly California and Nevada. I bought it because my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather was a Wells Fargo detective who has been credited with the capture of the notorious gentleman stagecoach bandit Black Bart, and I knew that there was mention of him in the book. I opened it up to the index to look for him, John Thacker, and son of a gun, there is a reference to page 237. Photo on 236.
5/28/02
...and then there are the Stephen King stories with 237 in them, one of the strangest links, to my mind. Where's he pulling that number from, I'd like to know. Consider:
In The Stand the superflu is loosed on the world at 2:37 pm The redrum room in The Shining is number 237In Stand By Me when the boys pool their funds they have $2.37
12/12/07