The mean number is an average. The mean girl is an icon, the mode by which people socialized or attempting female may express power. Cutting. Exclusionary. And then there is meaning, to mean, I mean, what do you mean? So…middling, bullying or reaching for what matters? All of it: mean. This is the water we swim in when we write, when we put words down intending to mean. 

Meaning is a human urge. We assign it to random occurrences, let chance dictate our conclusions because we are in love with meaning. We juxtapose, string together, layer meaning onto matter (and call it metaphor). We create order out of chaos in search of meaning–and that is story. Labor at meaning, convince ourselves of it, fight over it.

Mean what you say, write what you mean. The truth may be cruel, but is it mean? The universe may be drifting apart, the numbers jumbled, but find the mean. Idle there in the average of all those numerical possibilities. Find your nugget of truth, wild imagination, passionate belief, vivid fiction, the mean and the meaning of them all, and write, write, write it down.