Counting Sheep

*The Dogs and the Hides*

(an Aesop's Fable)

Some dogs, famished with hunger, saw a number of cowhides steeping in a river. Not being able to reach them, they agreed to drink up the river, but it happened that they burst themselves with drinking long before they reached the hides. 

***

“Any new developments?” Ethel, a matronly co-worker in Accounts Receivable asked Marteen again. She wore pantsuits and was dreadfully concerned, as usual.

“I taught her how to divide last night. It got hairy with remainders. She is progressing as if it were a straight path.” Marteen changed the subject.

He was not teaching his child math, as it assumed everyone else in the office with their little water cooler conversations. In fact, Marteen was teaching math to his 2-year-old sheep named Godel. Ethel was fascinated by his unusual hobby. She had learned from Marteen that humans and sheep have a considerably longer history of companionship and co-dwelling than man and canine. Furthermore, sheep were actually the first domesticated animal by humans for food-the latter always noted respectfully with a whisper.

As an Investigative Auditor for Check$ & Blanace$, Ltd., Marteen had a stressful job. He had been working for the company for 18 years and had been often given the most difficult problems to solve. Since 2025 the Federal government had enacted legislation that required employers in fields considered ‘Type: S/A’ (Stress/Anxiety-inducing) to promote (and facilitate) animal adoption by its employees for the widely known physical and mental health benefits. It was a wildly successful program that ultimately resulted in the cessation of cigarette smoking and overcrowded shelters. The ruling shelved Xanax, Paxil, lowered the production of Valium much to the chagrin of pharmaceutical companies who were furiously working on nonaddictive amphetamines The pet adoption therapy even curbed alcoholism across the entire country by 10%. Being neither a cat or dog person, Marteen elected to adopt a small flock of sheep, three-hundred and sixty-nine to be precise. That may seem like a lot, but in reality, having a dozen was much the same. A band of sheep is one-thousand and this usually includes just one black sheep. Marteen had thirty-six that were black and since they were of little value to farmers for wool, the wool resists dying, and thus as a textile, much less versatile. There was also something about luck, Marteen hated that word.and so rarely paid attention to cultural conspiracy theorists. Marteen was a simple shepherd, a single man, of course. Betrothed to mathematics and lately, he had been focused on an odd new problem with numbers in a more passionate, relentless way, as if his life depended upon it. A crisis of faith-Faith being another word Marteen ignored.

Every single day after work, Marteen worked diligently with his sheep setting up experiments in the field or in the barn-sometimes in his ranch home. Aside from attempting to teach them mathematical concepts, to prove and disprove theories, he was after the bigger more existential quandary. He sought the wolf under the wool.

At the age of forty-two, Marteen was physically fit and healthy overall. Aside from his private wrestling with the worst dilemma of his life thus far, he felt mentally worn down, near death or pessimism. He had been distracting himself from the real problem, an absence of meaning, an absence of purpose-of math, of money, of numbers, of value. It was the real problem of his life purpose or lack thereof and versus the bigger natural problem, that numbers do not actually exist.

Ethel advised Marteen to see her therapist with a gentle insistence that the act of confession is good for the soul and may be all he needed. Ethel was confident that if Marteen shared his numerical conundrums with someone outside of his concrete field, say another breed in a more abstract profession, it would have a positive effect on Marteen’s whole psyche. Ethel was a positive woman.

He decided to try.

Session 1

“Mr. Clew, would you care to share with me a little bit about your relationship with Godel-is it?”

“Call me Marteen, please Dr. Lilly. I appreciate your making time for me-I really doubt you will be able to assist me with anything-honestly. I cannot even put a finger on it. I believe you know Ethel, she said you worked magic. You have some magic touch? Well, see-I have been stuck-in-in a rut-I guess...it seems numbers have stopped computing easily for me-I used to be able to just put two and two together and come up with four, now-its blurry-I visualize ‘many-ish’-but more-why bother, they don’t mean anything if they do not reflect themselves in nature. Do you realize how close to nothingness infinite happens to reside, or rather, how close to infinite the nothingness dwells? No need to answer, the answer is it is...all the same. Have you ever heard of the Lamb-shift?”

“It says here that when you were 13 you were considered a ‘Mathematical Prodigy’, has something changed, has there been a regressive trigger? Did something happen in your personal life-a family member? Are you-perhaps--more interested in husbandry-of the animal variety-than professional employment-Remember, your answers are all confidential with me.”

Dr. Lilly smiled warmly, shifted in her oversized green velvet chair with brass pins while looking over the turtle shell glasses that slipped down her nose. She smelled like wildflowers in the Spring rain. Marteen was now hovering by the window, forcing himself to look outside. He noted the sun glaring off the windshields of the cars in the parking lot, he began sorting and counting the cars, by engine size and year in his head and continued his conversation with the lady doctor.

“No family. I suppose I have had a what people normally call “crisis of faith”. Although, you may note that I am not a religious man-I belong to no cults. The issue seems to add up to this; How can I do my job when I have realized that numbers are nothing, they are purely conceptual idea holders-make believe containers?! And if numbers are not even real, if all financial records were destroyed-what value remains-who owes who? How much is money worth when nobody has it? One cannot eat money. My job is fleecing people-taking the wool blankets off their already sagging beds!”

Marteen collected himself and then blurted, “If I am given a problem, I can solve it. Always have, always will. Anything. Any problem can and will make sense to me, there is an order-hiding. It is the language of mathematics. And the Lambshift, Miss Lilly-I mean Doctor Lilly? I will give you a clue, it is the difference between two energy levels. Have you read Kant”

“Was that a clue or the definition? Isn’t infinite simply incomplete, not insoluble or unsolvable, perhaps comprehensible as a concept. And I deal with concepts more than tangibilities in my profession.

But really, they are real. Numbers. I don’t buy groceries with promises or therapy. But, since numbers are your job, it does sound like a real problem-or dilemma if you’d prefer. And, yes, I am familiar with Kant.”

“The only way I have figured out to solve this-objectively-is if I can cross the bridge of consciousness, into a part of nature. The animal mind. You see, if I am able to teach my sheep some math, at least the fundamental concepts, numerical truths, and say, if my ewe learns—which of the two; real numbers or natural numbers are larger or can answer with an infinty-or pi, or currency values-then I have proof and I shall never need to come see the likes of you or any other therapist I imagine. Kant-and Russell and Frege-anyway Kant alleged first that all mathematics is subjective; no more than human rules and societal laws we have made up and not chance or regular habit say-to make us feel safe, that we can predict and outwit it all while somehow being a part of it. Oh, this is all non-sense...This whole problem is just me! What I have made it into, the way letters and numbers are now exploding and fractalizing in my mind…all in my head,” he said, pointing to his head while shaking it dismissively.

“Hmmm,” she smiled warmly, “you may be onto something. Instead of letters in place of numbers, have you tried just doing the steps, one by one and see if she follows? A sort of trail of logic...”

Second Session

The first therapy session had been stimulating for Marteen. He approached his work with renewed vigor for a short time. He even made strides progress with Godel, she easily understood equivalencies, such as a pound of wool was the same as a pound of grass or gold. Still, Godel would not grasp negatives and seemed utterly puzzled by uncertainties or probabilities. She bleated with Marteen in frustration as if suddenly he was trying to trick her.

At his second session with Dr. Lilly, he was introduced to her companion dog ‘Beanie’, whom she had to bring to work at the last minute because of some repairs being done on her house. Well behaved, the mutt lazed at her feet, his ears twitching up and down with their conversation.

“You look awfully tired today Marteen. Could this be the part of your problems? How many hours are you sleeping a night on average?” The sweet smelling doctor noted a darkness under Marteens green eyes, the purple resembled a faded bruise.

“It was 16.”

“What?”

“I was called a genius at 16 when I left high school and went straight to the University on scholarship-it was at age sixteen, not thirteen-as it says in your file.”

“Okaaaay. Sixteen, not thirteen. Hardly a difference. And sleep?”

“It can be thirteen, as you said. It doesn’t matter now. History has already been changed. I suppose around five-hours of sleep if I had to guess.”

“Have you tried any methods to relax into more sleep, to wind your very active mind down, say imagining a green pasture and counting the wildflowers-it works for many patients with insomnia or really-just the counting itself is relaxing to many-of course I understand if this bothers you-”

“It does,” Marteen confirmed.

“If I were to imagine infinite sheep and infinite blades of grass are the infinities of say...the flock and the field the same? Are infinite flocks the same as infinite sheep, and likewise, is infinite grass the same as infinite fields?”

“Mr. Clew, I am not nearly as numerically inclined as you-it is your field as they say. Perhaps there is a forest for the trees situation here. Meaning, can you not enjoy a sense of infinity?”

Once again, the session with Dr. Lilly was most illuminating for Marteen. He now resolved to keep an open mind about knowledge versus intelligence and the ends to the means of which both the human and animal brain serve, he thought of the vibrating filament between survival and entertainment. For the first time, he found himself contemplating such metaphysical and theoretical intangibles as the difference between the spirit and the soul.

Three's a crowd

Later that evening Marteen could not focus or sit still and went into town to find a ‘piece’ of mind, see if greener grasses lie at the local brewery. His startling new revelation that numerical concepts are all relative to the symbols they represent-but they do represent something real. Math was then as real as language. Saying ‘Beer’ does not put one in front of you-except at a bar. He felt lighter, and for the first time in his life stopped counting everything and laughed at conspiracy theories and enjoyed indulging in the local gossip. While at the Liquid Lunch Pub, he did not count bottles on the wall, the nuts in the bowl, the straws in the holder, nor the cardboard printed coasters-in fact, he easily lost count of how many drinks he had and the Time. Marteen relished his date with ignorance. He felt his shackles break. Marteen finally felt like part of a herd.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, under the blue glow of the full moon, howling carried across the open fields, Godel felt lonely and understood the notes of the wilddogs's despair. On Marteens stumbled walk home that night, he noticed something he was certain he imagined. As he approached the front metal gates to the main driveway, he thought he saw an owl perched on the nearest fencepost, a white owl reflecting the blue moonlight. He stopped, it hopped itself around and cocked its head at Marteen. In this moment, the profile revealed against the purple sky clearly denoted that of a crow, the sharp beak, and arrowed body now quite obvious to him. Marteen shrugged this off, attributing his blurry vision to the night lighting and likely he was also slightly hallucinogenic from the alcohol and lack of sleep. As he went through the front door he heard an unmistakable “Caw” which follows him onto the porch. Despite this eeriness, he slept like a lamb for the first time that day since he began spinning numbers, gathering wool and practicing the fine the art fleecing.

That following Monday Marteen turned in his resignation. Well rested, he determined he would spend the remainder of his life watching the grass grow. It did not take long before his mind and hands grew bored and he began tinkering around the house. He played around for eight months inventing what he called a ‘Sucker’. Alas, due to the name he gave it and the overwhelming poor reception of his invention by his fellow townsfolk (seeing is believing) what was arguably a reinvention of the vacuum had to be put back in the closet. This contraption scared people-where did all the hair go? What if it sucked up more than the hair?

On the next model, he decided simple was better, he pulled out his Occams’ Razor and came up with the ‘Wooly Mammoth©’ Super Duty Pet Hair roller which made him a trillionaire in the predominantly pet owning society. This, of course, made his new wife very happy since she was allergic to certain pet hair dander herself.

Letting the fleece and gold chips fall where it may, Marteen finally found shear bliss in a shepherd's idyllic poetic ways. And now that money did not matter, math was no longer his problem, he focused on making yarn(s) and like any new undertaking, became better at it with time and practice, by making mistakes and finding new paths to solutions.

Mrs. Johanna Lilly became a well-known breeder and trainer of world-class ‘Queensland heelers’ (an intelligent breed of cattle dogs) which became known for their meticulous accounting skills, exhibiting a consistent genetic knack for keeping track of every single head of livestock in their charge, an invaluable asset to any rancher. Johna, as Marteen called his wife, devoted the ungrazable fields behind their humble abode to the natural landscape, she wanted to keep the backdrop ‘wild’ she explained. In what is normally considered the cruelest month, Lily of the Valley blooms soon blanketed their Eastern view. The happy couple had now discovered the value of Wordsworth, finding ‘splendor in the grass’ and learning to feel the word for the word, the word ‘glory’ as they feasted their eyes on the infinity of tiny white bells every generous Spring.

Ethel finally retired too. She now wears sundresses every day (without a bra) and has become Treasurer of the Red Cross Poetry Society for Recovering Accountants.

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, 'Shepherds with flock of sheep' 1872 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.