lOGARITHMS, iNTEGERS and vECTORS*

I am tired; I have not been this tired since my expulsion from the parturition hole some forty-eight years ago, February 27th, to be exact {which I seldom am}. And the doctor, masked in green linens, spectacles taped to the bridge of his nose, forcing the speculum into the ovum hatch, compelling me to skim like an otter down the birthing canal, legs akimbo, arms flailing for dear life. Perhaps this is when the compulsions started, the origin of their unmasking. Afloat in the clemency of the amniotic sac, fingers gripping the umbilicus, I felt an ease and comfort that has thereafter eluded me; a foetal oneness, a meta-ontological parity, a oneness with self and other. I can count on nothing but logarithms and integers, vectors and fractions, into’s and out-of’s, pluses and minuses, algebraic nonsense {all of it}.