3:33

I am startled awake for no reason.  Heart pounding.  3:33.

Sometimes I wake from a dream with the feeling that someone is at the foot of the bed, observing.  I lie still, controlling my breath until convinced I am alone.  The clock says 3:33.  Other nights I sleep fitfully, my back aches, I have intermittent pains in my shoulder or a cramp in my right calf.  My blankets creep toward one side of the bed, leaving my backside exposed and chilly.  I resist, but eventually look at the clock.  It is 3:33.   

I used to have a book that equated times of day with the functioning of internal organs.  The bladder and the kidney and the liver each dominate a few hours.  Grief is associated with the lungs and the lungs have a period of effectiveness and an interval of weakness.  You should shit between 5 a.m. and 7 as a kindness to your bowels.  I don’t know what system is operative at 3:33.

3:33 is a palindrome.  It’s half of the mark of the beast.  Added together it equals 9, which is the age my roommate was until yesterday when she became ten, double digits.  The number five is sacred to Venus, but I don’t know who reveres the number three, unless it’s the earth, third planet from the sun.  I wonder if I am being called back to earth at 3:33 from dreams, or if I’ve been abducted by very punctual aliens.  I look for meaning in these small signs and my roommate tells me, “Not everything is magic.” 

She doesn’t believe that, and neither do I, so I look to the globe for a point in space.  Is there a highway 333?  An x-y coordinate?  If I understood longitude and latitude perhaps I could identify a spot on the map that is calling me home. 

Every night I ask for clarification in my dreams.  But so far I’ve received one message only.  3:33. And it is beginning to seem less like a direction than a reminder.  Each night, the clock reveals to me one moment of equilibrium – an invitation to let go of the regrets and the schemes and the heavy march forward.  3:33. A one second sutra beckoning me into the whole of timeless space with its black nights and the bone-chilling sliver of moon shining without judgment through the bamboo shade.

March 2001