On May 10, 2010, a tornado destroyed my son's house. From the curb, it did not look like a total loss, but without a roof, and all internal structural beams either snapped or broken, it had to be condemned. By July 20, 2010, the demolition crews had finished their work and there was nothing left on the lot but dirt and grass.

Entry from a numerologist’s notebook:

I think you can see the significance of the date already. The repetition of “10” – and the double of ten in the middle –

10 - 20 - 10... 10 - (10*2) - 10

May is the 5th month. All the numbers are divisible by 5. That number was, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and medieval cosmology, a perfect number and it represented the Virgin Mary, the Queen of the Heavens.

The tornado occurred around 5 pm in the afternoon.

Five is associated with mother. One might even go as far as to say the divine maternal.

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When I was 5 or so months pregnant with Michael (in May, also, I believe), his dad and I were driving around looking at the dramatic weather brewing up.

The weather turned dramatically bad – wall cloud, low-lying ragged clouds brushing the telephone lines and moving in a vaguely circular motion. Tornados were beginning to form.

So, I uncorked the tiny bottle. It was labeled just like the tiny energy drinks they sell at convenience stores next to the cash register—the kind you mix in with your Big Gulp Diet Coke. However, this was no energy drink. I knew better. It was a love philtre, and thought I was ready to fall in love.

I told Michael’s dad we needed to go home. If we were hit by the tornado, it would not be survivable for the mom or the baby. There were numerous funnels. We left. One of the funnels extended all the way to the ground and became a tornado, which then did damage to trees and outbuildings, but we were already gone.

Michael was more or less the age I was when that close encounter with a tornado off Highway 77 occurred. Age 25.

Entry from a numerologist’s notebook:

The patterns are too bold, too obvious to ignore. Ignore at your own peril. One might argue that patterns and repetitions are everywhere, but we have partial data sets, thanks to poor data collection skills.

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Michael and his wife, Shandell, bought the house. They were in it for a year or so when they realized the house was too much.

In September 2008, I offered to buy the house and let them live there rent-free while they were in school. I made all the arrangements, but when the time came to pick up the cashier’s check, I just couldn’t do it. Something blocked me. I just could not force myself. I apologized, and then offered to boost my overall support for school endeavors – with the idea that it could help cover the house expenses (or at least contribute to it).

Michael and Shandell put the house on the market. It had been on the market for more than a year. In the meantime, Michael rehabbed a small house in Shandell’s dad’s family. Michael rehabbed it by hand.

When Michael first showed it to me, I left in tears. I could not stand the idea of the two of them living in such a place – mold, rodents, rotten floors, ruined sinks, non-functional bathroom, collapsing walls, rotten carpets, mildewed wallpaper, foul beyound foul kitchen. It was, in no uncertain terms, a teardown. The City of Norman agreed, and had already posted warnings to the owner to get it back in code or else.

It took almost all summer, fall, winter, and spring – but on May 1, they were ready. They moved into the rehabbed cottage in the oldest part of town, near the hospital. Michael paid for almost all the materials used to rehab the house. I tried to help with additional contributions here and there, plus hoped my overall help would be a contribution. I was shocked at the transformation. It went from something worse than a meth den or crack house, to a cute, modern cottage with a new kitchen, gleaming stainless steel, cheerful pain, solid new wooden built-ins, cheerful painted walls, arched doorway... A gem. Created by Michael and Shandell.

When the tornado hit, Michael and Shandell were sitting in their living room in the cottage watching the weather coverage on television. A news helicopter was filming the tornado. As they watched, they became aware that it was tracking its progress – right into their neighborhood. It was a multi-vortex tornado, which mean that its multiple vortices were like writhing snakes wreaking havoc in random ways. It took a roofs, fences, sheds, clutches of cars, and – an entire house – (Michael’s).

If, in fact, I had been able to force myself to close on the house, Michael and Shandell would have been still living there. If they had been in the house, they and their two pugs, Jewels and Buddy, would have been gravely injured. They would have lost almost all of their possessions. Worse – since it was finals week, it’s likely they would have lost their course notes and work (and computers).

So, whatever blocked me from closing on their house on that fateful day in Fall 2008 was to be appreciated. And, well, given it was 2008 and there was economic chaos, it was better to have liquidity, which enabled me to later accept a job in Tulsa and to have the funds to be able to rent an apartment in Tulsa.

Entry from a numerologist’s notebook:

It is my personal opinion that there were, without a doubt, a number of numerological correspondences and patterns in the events associated with the global banking crisis, the stock market fluctuations, and the investment banking debacles – all during 2008 – but the sheer magnitude made it too frightening to contemplate. Most people preferred to have their heads in the sand at least 95% of the time. 5% is all they could take.

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Months later, after intensely stressful (aneurism-inducing, according to Michael) of red tape and headaches, Michael was finally able resolve the situation. The insurance came through. In essence, they sold their house to the tornado. No lives were lost. No possessions were lost.

If you look closely at the circumstances of the good fortune, one can find a purposeful, intentional arrangement of the events, times, places. It’s not much of a leap to put them into a narrative that casts many of the circumstances and details as signs.

Should I? Should I take that narrative possibility and run with it?

Entry from a numerologist’s notebook:

If you don’t take heed, you either run counter to the message. You defy a clear and present admonition (or opportunity). Your resistance will cost you something. But, if you follow the signs, likewise, you will pay. You will pay to play.

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I’ve decided to err on the side of faithlessness.

It’s true; I’ve always been intrigued by mad messiahs and doomsday cults. If only I could believe, strong-mindedly and without skepticism, I might even have the force of will to write a certain Screed of Signs, and the pull people into the idea that if they follow what I have been told by the Divine, we will all be protected.

Mad messiahs can be religious. They can be political. Often they are both. Sometimes, they’re ideological, which perhaps encompasses both but goes in a different direction.

The problem is that I don’t like dogma, especially not the monotonous single-mindedness of dogmaticism. They allow one interpretation and one interpretation only. Life is just not much fun without multiple interpretations – even the one that asserts that there is no meaning at all in it; just meaning in how we deal with the randomness of life.

I would make a sadly deficient mad messiah, religious, political, ideological, or other.