FUN AND GAMES WITH NUMBERS AND OTHER  THINGS  IN THE YEAR 2006

Ute Kaboolian

            On today’s auspicious date of 7-7-‘7 I am finally sitting down to type up this little article accompanied by the music of nine concerts around the world in honor of LIVE EARTH, which my daughter and I are listening to on Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel. Not seven concerts, but nine. We’re writing the year 2007, and 2 and 7 sums to nine, after all.

     Now to the year 2006. On 1-18-2006, which sums to 18, or 666, I played the Neave game Tetris on line.  One of the games I played that day resulted in Level 16, Lines 111 and Score 66,616. Wow! I thought. Level 16 sums to that great number 7, Lines 111 fits in with my review of Sue Watkins’ book The Wow Factor in Coincidences and the article I wrote about it, entitled, How a Review of a Book of Coincidences Spawned Its Own Unique Coincidences And How Writers and Readers Find Themselves on the Same Page.

Score 66,616 contains not only the number 666 but also 616, both numbers I came up with and wrote about in my little article Of Runes and Numbers when fooling around with numerology and doing my name Ute Herbig Kaboulian with an alphabet of Hebrew and Greek letters mixed in, as suggested in the book Fortune Telling by Runes by David and Julia Line. Interesting that their name Line is also part of this Tetris game with their” level, line and score, which I played on line.

     Exactly three months later, Rob Butts wrote me a letter, dated April 18, 2006. It was illustrated with his beautifully colored one-line Christmas tree. I counted 14 stars surrounding it, and 14 is a huge number for me. 17-6, my birthday, sums to 14, and 1931, the year I was born, also sums to 14. When I was born, day and month perfectly equaled the year. This year, Rob’s 87^th birthday, when written the British way even more number-perfectly equals the year, namely 20-06=2006.

     Four days later, on April 21-2006, two things of special interest to me happened:

     1. My father’s home town, Koblenz a/Rhein, was pictured in the N.Y. Times International Section: Restorative efforts have made the Rhine cleaner than it was in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, and Atlantic salmon are back.

     2. I came upon the TV show Deal or No Deal my friend John Byrne had told me about. He thought I might like it because of the numbers. Though it was by no means a new show, it was the first and only time I watched it. The numbers were amazing from beginning to end. The Banker’s first amount was 14,000. I mentioned the significance of number 14 for me above, Rob’s 14 stars, the 14 from the date of my birth. It pulled me in. I thought, let’s see what’s next. Next came 31,000, the year of my birth. Then came 83,000, the year of my out of body excursion of my Journey of No Other, then came 160,000. The year 2006 was the 160^th anniversary of the Armenian Evangelical Reform Movement, the church our family attended, It was interesting to me that the following amount was reduced to 148,000, which sums to 13, the reverse of ’31, the year I was born, Then came 301,000: In 301 AD the Armenians adopted Christianity as their state religion, making them the first nation to do so. Curiously enough, 301 is also the number given to the Turkish article 301, which stands in the way of Turkey’s being admitted to the European Union. The million dollar amount was behind Nr. 14. Again, my heart beat a little faster. Inside the suitcase Nr. 11 were 25.00 dollars. 25 sums to 7. I think of my friend Basha and myself as the 711 kids. She lives on the 7^th and I live on the 11^th floor of a building with 31 floors of one of twin buildings.

     The day before my birthday, on June 16, 2006, I handed Basha a fortune cookie, one of three that were on the table from the recent meal we had ordered from Green Shell, the Chinese restaurant in our town. She read it out loud. “The best prophet of the future is the past,” and later meant to throw it out with used paper napkins and other garbage. Somehow it ended up on the floor from which my daughter the following day, my 75^th birthday, on June 17, 2006, picked it up and handed to me, just for the fun of it. I read it once again and then with great astonishment the following “lucky numbers.” The first one, 42 had been my most favorite multiplication result as a child. The next number, 28, is my birth number, which you get when you add up all the numbers of the day you were born. Then came three numbers in succession in the following order: 17,6,31, which is my birthday. I was born 17 June ’31. I had just written my poem for Rob Butts’ amazing 87^th birthday this year where I point out that in Britain, France and Germany they write the date differently, namely the day before the month, just like they had done it on this fortune cookie. The last number, the amazing number, 9, which is my daughter’s birth number concludes this series of lucky numbers.

     My association with the restaurant's name, Green Shell, becomes obvious when you read my shell story article, named One Up For Synchronicity, or Shells, Shells, Shells. I turned the little strip of paper around and read the following: Learn Chinese: GOOD, und underneath it HAO. Wow, I thought. That’s my name! Ute is a wishing name and means that you wish everything good for the child. Thank you, Green Shell, for the neat birthday present you inadvertently gave me. And thanks for all the good food. Chinese, American and Italian, and lately even cheese cake, the New York kind, my favorite. HA are both my parents' initials.  Albert  and Aghavni Herbig.

            My children gave me a special birthday gift: The portrait of Seth that Rob Butts painted so beautifully and which now brought back this amazing dream I had around St. Patrick’s Day in the spring of 1984. A little man whom I thought to be a leprechaun appeared to me in brilliant white, pointed to my shoebox with some of my writings in green ink and declared with authority: “You should write. You are good.”

    I was so happy I jumped up and down and danced like crazy though in waking reality I had been using a cane at the time. When I turned back to thank him, he was gone. Shortly after this, I came upon Rob’s Seth portrait in a copy of The Seth Material and almost dropped it for there was my leprechaun: a man portrayed from the waist up. Aha, I thought, that’s why I thought he was small. I had seen Rob’s living painting but it had been white with electricity so that I had to blink. I could hardly look at the little man; he almost blinded me. I then grabbed all the Jane Roberts books I could find, and started reading.

     This year, my birthday sums to 31(6-17-2006=31), a number dear to my heart because I was born in 1931. I also just noticed on reading Seth Speaks once again that Seth started dictating the second part of his first book on my birthday in 1970 which that year also summed to 31. Amazing, I thought. This year my daughter’s birthday (7-5-2006=20) sums to 20. In Oversoul Seven the date when the child puts his ear to the stone is my birthday in 2211 (6-17-2211=20) and also sums to 20.

     Rob’s canvas turned out to be number 46 of 500. Wow, I thought. Wasn’t Black Sheep 46 the one which contains the photo of my fan tapestry which for me symbolizes the Seth/Jane phenomenon after my “Journey Like No Other” and on the front cover sports the crop circle gift the universe gave Rob on his birthday in 2001 while in 2002 it gave me the crop circle of the Letter “Y” on the cover of Black Sheep 68 for my 44^th wedding anniversary? I now finally realize why my old phone number ended in 68. Rob painted his self-portrait in 1987 when he was 68 years old while this year, in 2006, he turned 87. (My father was born in 1887). I also just realize that Rob painted his Seth portrait in 1968. Wow!

      Once again the fan tapestry hangs over my bed and to the left of it my children hung the canvas. I can see Seth there every morning cheering me on and giving me confidence. From wherever you stand in the room, his eyes follow you: the mark of a true masterpiece, as we learnt in school. We all marveled at a charming detail: a bent nail protruding from the window sill.

     My friend just stared at the painting for the longest time saying nothing.  Then she said, “He’s serious. Wait, now he smiles. Now he’s serious again. I know him.”

     The young woman from Peru, who helps me, had the funniest reaction. Addressing the portrait, she said, “Don’t look at me like that! Fresh! Hmm!”

     “I know what you mean,” I said, and we both cracked up laughing.  When I told her of my leprechaun dream around St. Patrick’s Day she said, “St. Patrick is my saint. I was born in March. March has two saints.  The other one is St. Joseph.” Oh, I thought. That makes sense. Seth calls the painter of his portrait Joseph, after all. How wonderful when names and numbers come together like this.

7-5-2006

We watched Jimmy Cagney, you and I,

In “Yankee Doodle Dandee, on the Fourth of July.

I danced in my seat and tapped to the beat till late in the night.

Then, at 11:51 the following morn’

On a bright sunny Sunday, you, my first-born, were born.

‘Twas the fifth of July in 1959,

Which  sums to 36: a number divine.

Indeed, where would the Armenian alphabet be

Without Mesrob Mashtots, born’round 360 AD?

Its 36 letters, burnt into a cave’s wall,

Helped preserve our identity.

Noah’s ark came to rest in Armenia, after all.

Those bards of old, I can still hear them sing,

“Noah’s great- great-grandson was Haig, our first king.”

The Hittites and Chaldeans are long gone but we Armenians are still going strong.

As you pointed out the other day,

 Cliffside Park, New Jersey, our town, boasts 3.6 % Armenians, here’s the 36 once again, and that’s quite amazing, wouldn’t you say?

I love you and thank you for all you have done.

Happy Birthday, dear Dianchen, now let’s have some fun. - Your Mom

       The year 2006 ended with a neat surprise. I received Madelon RoseLogue’s Black Sheep magazine, the last for the year 2006, Nr. 74. The cover blew me away. Barbara Waddell had sent in Lucy Pringle’s amazing photograph of a crop circle featuring a huge vinyl record, c.180 ft in diameter. Immediately, I was transported back in time to Berlin, Germany, where I had been employed as artist of the Special Services Division of the American Library during the American occupation after World War II. The rendering of a vinyl record had given me such trouble that only after finding one in a magazine and copying it exactly, was I able to produce a good simile of one. This crop circle brought it all back to me. In the same Black Sheep Madelon had printed up a short excerpt of my memoirs, entitled  Christmas 1940 which I myself had  illustrated, another synchronicity with my “artistic” endeavor of  those many years ago. Madelon also picked out three of my poems and embellished them with a picture of three deer. When you turn my maiden name, Herbig, around, it becomes Gibreh. In German the word ‘gib’ means give and ‘Reh’ means deer, which latter word sounds like dear. I take it as a message from me to me, “Give, dear!” Okay, I get it.