A Brilliant Billion Times You (Unedited Version)
Written for Skip and Sarah and Stan of Cabrillo College and their loved ones+

Numbers in the billions contain three commas. That you know.

A billion dollars is a thousand times more than a million dollars. Accurate, as we know, but… meaningless. Lacking emotional dimension, for one. Like reading about springtime without ever having smelled the birth of a Carthaginian Rose*.

*Okay, without ever having inhaled the scent of a flower.

A billion dollars is equal to a stack of crisp, new $20 bills _____ times as high as the Empire State Building. You fill in, please. [Pause.] Hmmm, even if you come up with the correct answer it’s not going to mean much if you don’t really have a sense of how big that skyscraper is…. And even if you know its height, you might not get it if you’ve never seen it. Seen it in person. The 102nd Floor Observatory would take you to — forgive the pun — another level, yes? And let’s say that you walked up to its 360 degree view of the Big Apple instead of taking the elevator there. Wouldn’t that color, make alive what a billion dollars amounts to?

Time out here for a relatively unknown poem by Tennessee Williams. Trust me, it’s for a deeply lyrical reason. If I lose you because of it, so be it. But I do urge you to read through this entire article… and, then, contact me. For a long talk. To implement a plan.

How lovely wetness makes the flesh
our bodies will declare
when we step from this shining pool
into the shining air

How lovely passion makes the lips
our kiss will testify
when we step from this brilliant earth
into the brilliant sky

Twelve times the height of the Empire State Building. That’s the formal answer. But let’s go deeper, get higher.

If you laid those $20 bills end-to-end, they’d stretch from New York to Los Angeles (where the foul air alone makes the big city uninhabitable) and back — NYC to LA and back — _______ times. Again, you fill in the answer, please.

[Pause.] Hey, this is quite like an excerpt from a play I’m writing!

Sixteen times back and forth. With enough left over to go from New York to Mexico City… and back is the answer.

If you’ve never traveled across the U.S., say… from Virginia to Aptos, California… you’re gonna have a different take on this all… than if you had. My new friend — such a dear (invoking Abbie Hoffman, and smiling ear to ear) — told me yesterday that twenty years+ ago he had driven with his wife along that route… in a little Volks bug! Now that trip had to be a whole different trip than what would be experienced today in, say, Willie Nelson’s tour bus, stoned out of your mind, or not. It certainly wouldn’t compare to a jet ride cross our U.S. cumulus clouds. And none of these trips are in the same category as actually walking across the country, back and forth, sixteen times… and then doing a round-trip by foot from the Big Apple to the killer realm* of Mexico’s capital.

*Remind me, when we get the chance. to run by my take of the swine flu biz and the bad air there. It’s not what most people think.

[Pause.]

Seriously, there’s obviously a huge difference — a difference which could change your life — between learning what a billion dollars is — or a billion anything, like a billion Muslims — if you’ve sashayed cross the country with this consciousness vs. hearing a grade school teacher provide the denotation of a billion. Funny (not so funny, actually)… I almost wrote down detonation instead of denotation in this paragraph (which includes a reference to Muslims). It’s also “funny” that no instructor of mine in ALL of my extensive education made a billion real for me. And so… I voted on this and that package worth a billion or more. Had heated discussions over this and that issue involving a billion of this and that. For many decades. Not knowing scat. I trust you get the point.

Stick with me here, please. [Pause.]

Let’s say you took a road trip. If you really pushed it, you might be able to drive an average of twelve hours a day (not counting gas stops, meals, sleep, etc.). If you drove seven days a week and averaged 65 while moving, it would take you almost four months to drive past a billion dollars’ worth of $20 bills.

But a billion dollars is nothing compared to a trillion dollars.

We can change the world… in the theatre… where it counts. And then, by extension, impact one and all in the so-called real world.

But, please, do not pause for one more heartbeat. I have a great sense of urgency about all this. Our little boy, Marcello (See www.marcelsgeo.blogspot.com and www.sosylvie.typepad.com) — the brilliant fact of him — begs us to meet our obligation.

No matter how many billions of dollars you might need to pay your upcoming mortgage or rent… I implore you to take, make the time. For I have an answer of sorts which comes to me in a recurrent dream. To which you are certainly welcome to say no, and keep my embrace.

For love doesn’t add up, but it multiplies.

Blessings in solidarity,
Ricardo
Contact me at headburg@yahoo.com. My credentials have something to do with the fact that I ran away from home when I was sixteen, and hitchhiked across the country… and back. And the fact that I know that others — like our military (and their corporate first cousins) — can’t waste what they don’t have (don’t need). Their ongoing abominations create an odor which I can’t help but smell when going to sleep and rising, making it almost impossible to smell that Carthaginian Rose.