Salamander Literature
I knew that six times felt right when I went swimming in Sacandaga Lake, and my kicking feet made little dollops in the thin water film. Onetwo, threefour, fivesix, stroke.
I knew that six was three and three more, and I loved that six was the double of something so lovely.
I knew that three was considered a beautiful number by ancient Greek philosophers.
I knew that triangles had three points, and three could be very balancing like that.
I knew that Babe Ruth wore the number three, and my dad loved the Yankees.
I knew that only three things were needed to make a pattern.
I knew that strange organisms found sanctuary in this little number. The Three Stooges, The Three Musketeers, the Three Little Pigs. And Goldilocks, did she know that she was thieving from three forest bears?
I knew that my fixation started with three and finished at six.
I knew that artists probably liked the number six because their color wheel had six colors, and
I knew that six was the highest number on a die, and if you rolled two sixes in a game of backgammon, you could advance one piece to the other half of the board.
I knew that you had to be six feet under Earth’s crust to be considered dead and
I knew that Henry VIII had six wives, all of whom he buried.
I knew that a sixth sense was something special.
I knew that only mystics and mediums could have it.
I also knew that sometimes people did not know that they were mystics and mediums.
I knew that I could not be a medium because my devotion to the number six was less about the astral planes and more about an invisible, intuitive whisper.
I knew that the voice said a lot of things, but the way it said six was strained like a bullet in a barrel, crying for help.
I knew that I wanted to heal its pain, but I could not find the source because I was flawed and useless that way.
I knew that if I kept believing in six and its divinity, I could curb some of that suffering.
I knew that six three-times repeated was supposed to be the devil’s number, but I wasn’t sure why, because six looked guiltless and incorrupt, and some sixes written next to each other just looked like a pattern made of guiltless and incorrupt creatures.
I knew that six was a sorcerer number, capable of regeneration.
I knew that snakes would sometimes eat their own tails, mistaking them for prey.
I knew that I’d seen that symbol before, indicative of rebirth.
I knew that the snake was just a circle when attacking itself.
I knew that six had a rounded body that reminded me of just that.
Maybe six’s body was rebirthing, except
I knew that snakes could not regenerate. Once they eat their tails, they would slowly expire.
I knew that regeneration was abnormal, making six all the more mystical.
I knew that drawing the number six felt like staring into an orbuculum. It was all so metaphysical.
I knew that I would forget that it was my mind, not the crystal ball that housed the number six.
I knew that I liked six and its physicality, so I wrote the number on newsprint.
I knew that it would transcend time in only the way that writing could. (The paper turned soft from old age, and the pen ink rubbed downward, making the number look like a space shuttle.) That paper soon looked like a silhouette, but six stayed. I knew that I used this piece of paper like a rabbit’s foot.
I knew that I could retrace that number, and if I did, it would look like the six regenerated like a salamander, growing once again a round body and upward tail.
I knew that amphibians were symbolically different because they breathed in differently and had malleable homes, and I thought maybe six could be like that, too.
I knew that six looked a bit like a salamander, if its tail curled just right and its salamander head bent in toward its salamander torso.
I knew that regeneration was a power that transcended our natural order, but salamander literature told me otherwise.
I knew that salamander literature was a mystic’s notebook—within it contained the proof of regeneration.
I did not know much about salamanders, but I liked their second-chance limbs.
I did not know how they rebirthed their limbs, but
I knew that it was scientific and strange.
I knew that rebirth seemed biblical, but salamanders are just animals, so maybe six was just a number. But I did not believe that.
I knew that regeneration was all about the creation of new tissue. Tissue building atop tissue, like brick and mortar (starting from the ground up).
I knew that a human hand could break a brick, and I watched this happen once. A man set cinder blocks aflame, and a woman pierced her hand through it all—the kerosene, the fire, the cinder blocks.
I knew that breaking a brick into two had to do with your mind forming a schema.
I knew that my mind harbored six like a schema.
I knew that defying our own expectation of what humans could do was a matter of creating schemas.
There was a certain elegance to this: a hand cutting through particles of brick.
I knew that if I imagined my hand slicing through a solid and fracturing air, I might be able to break a brick into two, and if I could do that, maybe I could stop that voice in my head that commanded six with consecration.
I knew that humans could still defy their schemas, and humans could tighten their finger bones at the last second, fearing what a wound may feel like. This would be a mistake; a tensed hand will not cut a brick.
I knew that the mind is a tricky thing—it can sabotage our finger bones. We will be thrown out of homeostasis (a rogue spark on train tracks).
I knew that my mind was a tricky thing, because it relied on six in litany.
I knew that when we experience an arbitrary convulsion, someone in another astral plane has stepped on our grave, and that our graves were six feet underneath the Earth’s crust.
I knew that the kinds of people that step too close to graves came to the graveyard at night.
I knew that they were not necessarily bad, but just clumsy with their own mortality.
I knew that stars were exploding in our strange present.
I knew that stars were exploding, and all I could do was nothing.
I knew that the stars were exploding, but when I closed my eyes, the inside of my eyelids looked like black holes.
I knew that they were not really black holes, but I saw black holes, and I saw six black holes as if I had three sets of eyes.
I knew that it was possible that a creature (undiscovered) could have three sets of eyes. I knew that this would help them capture their prey and ascend the food chain like a keeper on lighthouse steps.
I knew that if I saw this creature, I would like those six eyes.
I knew that my body writhed like a broken building if things did not oblige by the empyrean six.
I knew that I closed my eyes at nighttime.
I knew that nighttime was an end of a day but also a signifier of the more peculiar things. Legends and shadow figures thrived in moonshine.
I knew that my head-on-pillow-self would think about these things, pressing my body to the cold side of the wall.
I knew that I would often think about what was on the other side of that cold wall.
I knew that the shadows in my room danced an incongruent pavane.
I knew that I hated the way they defied the order of six.
I knew that shadows never rested, only lost visibility.
I knew that shadows could be reflections of people in other dimensions.
I knew that in this dimension, someone could have stepped on my grave.
I knew that I might have been in that dimension once or twice.
I knew that we arrived through the portals that we open in our dreams.
I knew that dreams were curious things.
I knew that dreams could be celestial, as could the number six, as could the regenerative salamander.
I knew that I was a different me in my dreams, and that I would wake up wanting to touch her hand and feel for corporeality.
I knew that the me in my dreams might not like her hand to be touched (if she was anything like me—finicky with the way human hands sometimes intertwine).
I knew that the me in my dreams could also be afflicted with the way six brands you with its cast iron.
I knew that a regenerative salamander could not stop thinking about the number six because its own regeneration could be explained by amphibian logic, but six’s regeneration was quite the mystery.
I knew that regeneration probably makes a salamander much more complacent about its own salamander actions.
I knew that six’s regeneration would make it paradisiacal.
I knew that the voice in my head would still chant the number six in canticle.
I knew that I could never be complacent, because ignoring six and its prominence would be complacency equivalent of damnation.
I knew that I could not do that.
I knew that the whisper in my head said six and it sounded so immortal and seraphic that I knew I would breathe that number’s air.
I knew that fives and sevens felt like anomalies to me.
I knew that six chose me, too.
I did not know why six chose me, but I knew that it felt intentional.
Maybe six chose me because I was a scale about to tip,
or maybe six chose me because I believed that darkness liked shadows and ballet,
or maybe six chose me because I thought that lighthouses harbored ghosts,
or maybe six chose me because I read salamander literature,
or maybe six chose me because I swam with dissonance,
or maybe six chose me because I thought the stars were utopian,
or maybe six chose me because I already was thinking about three.
I knew that the whisper in my head was six, personified.
I knew that I could make six smile.
I knew that six smiled each time it regenerated in my head.
I knew that I could not stop this regeneration because it was just like brick and mortar (starting from the ground up).
I knew that six would come back and keep coming back because it was manipulative and sagacious.
I knew that I would fall under six’s spell because its hypnotic air whistled through its smiling teeth.
I knew that I succumbed to six.
I knew that six was my salamander number.
ξ
Jillian Crocetta is a New York City based writer and a recent graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Previously, Jillian has written for SANCTUARY Magazine and New Voices Magazine and has blogged about entrepreneurship and small business for Biz2Credit. Now, she is excited to share something new in Guesthouse.