Mathemetician

[Doreen Peri]

I just wrote this and read it aloud to LR. "Do you like it?," I asked. "No," he answered. "Why?," I asked. "It's trite," he said. "See? Perfect answer. Proves my point."

________________________


I've decided to give up
on being an artist.
I tried to paint my life
but the colors got muddy.
I have thrown away the
canvas more times than
I can count and started all over
with a new one.

I attempted to turn my life into music,
but the melody line got obscured
by red notes. No matter how much
I practice, I cannot make the song
more pleasant to the ear.

I have tried to write my life, like a novel,
but there are too many words, too many
chapters that don't follow.

I attempted to make my life a poem,
but my spoken word is shrill, my metaphors
are lame, my internal rhymes are criminal,
my meter is off, my craft, weak.

My pointe shoes hang on a rusted hook
by frayed ribbons. My arabesque cannot
be performed. I cannot enter from stage
right. My jete is too slow for the tempo.
My turnout is gone. My dance is finished.
There is only one more step. Upstage
to curtain call.

I have decided to
become a mathemetician.

Numbers make more sense.
Each side of the equation is the same,
by definition. I can add to my life,
divide the important issues from the
unimportant, subtract ugliness, raise
love to the 10th power over and over
again.

Yes, I shall become a mathemetician.
Numbers have value. There are always
24 hours in a day, sixty minutes in an hour,
365 days in a year, and a finite number of
years in a lifetime.

Artistry has eaten my time by subjectively
dismissing it. Algebra offers firm calculations.
Physics prooves universal laws. Geometry
measures the physical plane.

What else is there?
Nothing.

Let me count the days.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Doreen:


I find your poem an interesting piece of personal probing-- the process of elimination has possibilities.

I have lived intimately with a mathematician for twenty years and more. My wife was a magna cum laude graduate in Math from the University of California and has taught Math in college for over twenty-five years.

And fortunately, she possesses many facets, only one of which is the tight zoning and syntactic surety of Math.

It is true that she can pack a car trunk or even a closet tighter and more efficiently than anyone I've ever met. She says her father, who used to go to furniture stores for ideas and then go home and build the pieces he saw that caught his eye, was a better packer and organizer.

After his death, when she and I and her brothers cleaned out his wood workshop and I saw the dozens of drawers, each designated for a different semi-microscopic calibration of screw or nail, I believed her.

He had made all the tiny, easy roll-out drawers and cabinets himself, or course.

But my wife is also a raving romantic. Right now she's visiting ancient Celtic worship sites, magical and holy wells, and enchanted standing stones in Ireland.

She has the most visionary ideas of anyone I know when it comes to thinking up ravishingly pleasant gifts to give to her many friends.

And I'm not talking about Mercedes Benz autos. I mean things that can be held in the hand-- and the heart.

I wish you luck in your venture ( he said, tongue in cheek, hovering over departed molars); but don't leave that superb design sense of yours behind anywhere.

My wife always held on to hers, even when she was working with systems of differential equations.

Here's a fun link to get you started:

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~his ... Women.html



Zlatko

[Doreen Peri]

I wish you luck in your venture ( he said, tongue in cheek, hovering over departed molars); but don't leave that superb design sense of yours behind anywhere.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Zlatko...... truly! As to the above quote, seriously my disguise as a mathemetician is hearsay, at best. I could never partake in such exactness. I respect all who do, though. Mary, of course, included. My father was a nuclear physicist. How could he calculate all that? He did it as an art, as I'm sure Mary does. To me, the only science is art. It's not as exact, for sure, but it is where I am stuck, wallowing, suffering the imprisonment. Thus my piece which arrogantly proclaims dismissing my entire value.

I lied. I could never be a mathemetician. Dammit!
I am a liar and this is a hoax. I filed my copy under
mediocre cliche shit. I have a folder for that topic.
If I could be a mathemetician, I'd figure more out
in regards to equality and value. For now, I write
a trite synopsis, file it away under cliche,
walk away to be back again to speak, perhaps.
Life is a craps game.
Who knows where talents lie?
Not I.
But I do pretend to transcend possibilities
with scoff at the very presence of my pen.
What else would I intend?
Thank you again.

[gypsyjoker]

What the hell was there before nothing that is what I want to know, zero chance of ever finding that out?

Nice poem, one more reason why I got to get the hell out dodge for awhile. I love the sound of your voice on the stuff clay has posted. All I can remember about Wittgenstein is he lived on Swiss cheese sandwiches for thirty years because he did not want to waste time thinking about what to have for lunch. He also said two and two is five. If you google his name you will get over a million hits, how is that for obscure. And uncle Albert said that math was just bookkeeping it is the image that is everything. Strange dreams, one Chemist had a dream about intertwining serpents, for years no one could figure out the structure of the benzene ring, when the guy woke up in the morning there it was a ring of snakes.

Arts and Sciences, science art, art science I think they give college degrees in that stuff

Adios amygdala

[e_dog]

math is an art. the art of pure formal relations.

the zero degree of style, where creativity bends back on itself and finds/founds a world.