For Sure by France Daigle Page B

the Aztec week. Hence:
    13 × 13 × 13 = 2,197
    12 × 12 × 12 = 1,728
    2,197 – 1,728 = 469 = 4 + 6 + 9 = (4 + 6) + 9 =
    (10) + 9 =
    (1 + 0) + 9 =
    (1) + 9 = 10 = (1 + 0) = 1
    We arrive at the same result when we multiply the number 13 by the 52 cards in a deck or the number of weeks in the average tropical year.
    13 × 52 = 676 =
    6 + 7 + 6 =
    (6 + 7) + 6 =
    (13) + 6 =
    (1 + 3) + 6 =
    (4) + 6 = 10 = (1 + 0) = 1
    202.17.7
    Chance
    In French Canada, Germaine Guèvremont’s Le Survenant (book one of The Outlander in the English translation) is the number-one bestseller with approximately 10,000 copies sold every year. This is followed by Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine and Émile Nelligan’s Complete Poems, which sell between 3,000 and 4,000 copies annually. Bousille et les justes ( Bousille and the Just Ones ) by Gratien Gélinas, L’Homme rapaillé (translated in part as The March to Love ) by Gaston Miron and Le Souffle de l’Harmattan (remains untranslated into English) by Sylvain Trudel are also bestsellers. As I write this, of all the above authors, only Sylvain Trudel is still alive.
    203.19.9
    Interesting Details
    When it came to the letter e , Le Grand Étienne stopped himself just as he was about to say the word sévère , thinking it might perhaps lead Le Petit Étienne too easily to the colour black. Black? Because until now, the colours his pupil had named were the same ones Zablonski himself would have chosen.
    â€œYour grandmothers are nice, no?”
    Le Petit Étienne felt like laughing. Of course they were nice.
    â€œAha! I bet they spoil you . . .”
    Ã‰tienne replied in the affirmative with a big smile.
    â€œAnd what’s your granny’s name, the one who lives in Grande-Digue?”
    â€œGranny Després!”
    â€œAnd what colour is the word Després ?”
    The boy’s expression turned serious, even somewhat troubled. Le Grand Étienne guessed what was happening:
    â€œIt’s not a very cheerful colour for your granny is it?”
    Ã‰tienne shook his head no.
    â€œYou’re right.”
    And the painter wrote black beside the e on hissheet.
    204.14.3
    Zablonski
    The need, therefore, for a degree of disorder, for imperfections, capricious forces, blurrings, that we might try to tame. The need to be human, need for events, for desires that collide and collude, even as they maintain a course toward perfection. One must forget the cube, and never forget the cube. To imagine a cube that’s not a cube, to reimagine a form of perfection, without forgetting that perfection, by definition, is that which does not change.
    205.12.8
    Structure
    It was several days after her visit to Didot Books that Élizabeth got around to leafing through La Bibliothèque idéale . Opening the volume at random — she always begins this way with a book of which she knows little — she landed on the “Arts through the Ages” section. And it was as though the book knew her intimately.
    206.24.1
    Ã‰lizabeth
    Numbers are not merely numbers, that is, arithmetical expressions. According to certain ancient traditions, numbers express qualities rather than quantities. Some even claim that numbers are superior to words when it comes to understanding the universe. To those who think that numbers are the product of our intelligence, the ancients argue quite the opposite, suggesting that our intelligence comes from numbers. After all don’t we say “it all adds up” to mean we have reached a new understanding or knowledge through the addition of a certain number of observations?
    207.97.3
    Numerals and Numbers
    â€œMathieu might’ve got de folks at Scrabble Inc. to sponsor ’im, if ee’d tawt of it.”
    . . .
    â€œEe phoned ’em wantin’ to buy a hundred sets of letters to make his art. But dose Scrabble folks — well, Hasbro actually — dey wanted to know what ee was