Call from 0000000000

Call from 0000000000, my iPhone says.

I don’t answer, I’ve made it a practice not to answer phone calls from phone numbers I don’t recognize.

Plus, I’m in the middle of a meditation, breathing out when the call I didn’t answer came in.

(The phone call from 0000000000 keeps being unanswered, ring, ring, ring).

Once I’ve breathed out I order a glass of good red wine. It seems like the right thing to do, a reward for being interrupted in the midst of meditation. Though I know it’s considered unhealthy to drink during the day, many people, people I admire—biographers, crossword constructors, retired golf professionals—recommend taking a drink in daylight once in a while, if only to mix things up, to access that part of the brain that normally only comes out at night. 

After taking a nice long drink, listening as the red wine travels south, I breathe in, resetting my meditative intention, which is to become as empty as I can possibly become. I close my eyes then as I’ve closed them in the past, determined to concentrate only on my breathing and thinking of any and all interruptions only as clouds passing silently. But it’s no use, even with my eyes closed all I can hear are clouds. I’m transfixed by clouds; I don’t want one cloud to pass by me unseen.

My iPhone, an action figure, is trembling in my hand. 

Who’s calling, I wonder? 

Whose phone number is made up of nothing but zeroes? 

What’s the sound of nothing? 

Green Flower Cloud, Shaped Like an Ear, At Rest on Windowsill, March 15, 2022.