Perhaps there’s no more meaning to an odometer rolling over than there is to counting down to midnight on New Year’s Eve. They are numbers, abstractions; neither descriptors nor narratives. A warranty expires. Years pass. Numbers are human inventions: there is no such thing as a wild 4, nor an elusive 9 in its home environment.
They’re shorthand. They let one make comparisons, track progress. They may mean nothing on their own, but if there are two fewer cookies than there were last night, Malcolm should likely explain. And maybe part of what’s both useful and problematic about numbers is that they let one compare without description: they reduce complexity. Instead of an account—that’s in the archive—a count.
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