8 times today I asked myself "why?"  8 times I thought to myself that maybe there's no point to this at all.  8 times I felt a dark wind over my ninety eight point six degree heart.  8 times I seemed to skip a breath, hastening my mortal biological vessel.  I looked to the sky, 8 times, and let rage fill my eyes and silently screamed to my soul that I live in a senseless dungeon called  Philadelphia.

What's so damn special about the number 8?  It seems rather inconsequential.  After all, baseball teams have nine players, soccer has eleven.  The heavenly celestial numbers in the bible are seven and twelve.  Even bad things seem to happen in threes.  So why 8, why is the number 8 so important to me?  8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8!!!!

Did you know that Philadelphia is on pace to average three murders a day?  That's one thousand and ninety five murders—mostly from hand guns.  And no, I won't turn this into, "if there were no guns there'd be no murders."  We could open the flood gates of discourse with public policy on the slab.  We could drown in the back and forth river about constitutionality, individual rights, the greater good, etc etc etc etc.  It gets us no where.  One thousand and ninety five people could die this year.  And who wants to talk policy?

8 people were killed this past weekend, Labor Day weekend.  Three days, 8 deaths.  Pointless, senseless, no valor, no glory, no life immortalized by song or poem, just angry uneducated kids armed to the teeth with no regard for tomorrow—with no regard for today.  No regard for the pieces that comprise the puzzle of existence.

Three days ago the puzzle seemed to be coming together.  I thought I was seeing each piece with clarity—with wisdom.  I have eight more reasons to doubt the beating hearts of each puzzle piece in this game.  What's so special about the number 8: maybe nothing.  After all, 8 is only  .7% of 1,095.