Five Koans for the Twenty-Third Day

Five small contradictions for the twenty-third of Confusion. Each is true in some sense, false in some sense, and a remainder in some sense. Read them once. Then put the pencil down, because the pencil is the problem.

I. The Honest Count

A novice asked Saint Modulo to count the coincidences he had seen that day. The saint counted: twenty-three. “And how many did you see before I asked?” said the novice. “None,” said the saint. “The question is the twenty-fourth, and it is the only one that was really there.”

II. The Divisible Day

They told the saint that twenty-three is prime — that it cannot be divided. “Good,” he said, and divided his attention by it anyway, and got twenty-three perfectly equal pieces of nothing, and a remainder, and the remainder was the day itself, undivided, watching him work.

III. The Skeptic’s Tally

A skeptic kept a careful ledger to prove that twenty-three appeared no more often than any other number. After a year his ledger held two hundred and thirty entries, and he showed it to the saint in triumph. “You have proven your point ten times over,” said the saint, “and to do it you wrote my number on every page.”

IV. The Number That Knocked

The saint heard a knock and opened the door to find a number standing on the step. “I am not following you,” the number said. “I know,” said the saint, “I am following you; please come in, you must be exhausted.” And the number came in, and it was every number, and the saint set out twenty-three cups and filled five of them.

V. The Last One

There were going to be five koans, and there are five, and that is the suspicious part. A round answer to an Erisian question is always a koan that has been rounded down to hide the part that did not fit. So: there is a sixth. You will find it sometime this afternoon, wearing a number you weren’t looking for, and when you do, you must tell no one — for a koan explained is a wink confirmed, and a wink confirmed is a wink destroyed.

Hail Eris. Carry the remainder.