Filomena

Did you know that the Mumbai terrorists planned to kill 5000 people? I read it in the paper. It’s a number that hangs over your mind, the shadow almost blotting out reason. They must have sat around their table, maybe arguing 3000 versus 7000, drinking tea, and smiled when they hit on 5000, a good number, a consensus number, a number that somehow resonates in our human heads. The papers say the Americans will leave 5000 dead in Iraq before they leave that country, just like they left 5000 on the beaches on D-day, in the world war. My village growing up had maybe 500, and I didn’t know most of them. And now they saw we have 5000 dead Mexicans this year already, not fighting on the battlefield or landing on beaches, but lying in alleys, murdered in the back streets before dawn. We have 5000 dead in our own private war, more a money war than a drug war. 5000. How is that possible?

I’m trying to imagine 5000. Ten villages. My entire family back to freakin’ Christopher Columbus. There are 5000 languages in the world. Facebook will allow a human no more than 5000 friends. Even Michael Phelps, no more than 5000. Our Mayan calendar and its Great Cycle, the whole of time, start to finish for an age of man, about 5000 years. But as the cycle closes, this is not the new age we were hoping for. In November 2008 the 5000^th person died trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. 5000 dead here in the streets of this country and 5000 dead trying to get out. So what does the new age mean to them? It means nothing. How do you tell people that the end of the age is not something you wait for? Either you go up to meet it, or it doesn’t happen. It’s not coming from outer space or the center of the earth or another dimension, either it’s coming from inside you or it’s not coming at all.

And it might not come at all.