RandomGrrl's blog

Life is more like Tetris

I made a startling revelation today. Okay, it was not THAT startling, nor was it really a revelation. It was more like a preface to a real epiphany. Maybe even calling it an "epiphany preface" is giving my thoughts too much merit. However, the thought pleased me, mostly because it was the first complete thought I had in quite a while.

I know what I want to do.

I don't know how to do it.

Nor do I have the motivation to find out how to do it (most days).

So where do I start? I suppose it would be easier if everything just fell into my lap, like an unassembled puzzle. Then I could piece everything together and find my happiness, discover my real "life purpose". The only problem with that sort of thinking is that in real life there are no neatly boxed puzzles. Unlike a puzzle which is a constructed image simply deconstructed for me to put back together, real life is un-constructed. What I start with is NOT like a puzzle... it's more like a game of Tetris, all of these pieces falling from the sky in random order and in random time, my job being to fit these pieces together before they pile up and crash the game.

What do I do with this squiggly shape?

How does this fit into my life?

Unlike Tetris, I do not have a controller, with neat little buttons to rotate the falling blocks around symmetrically. I do not have a pause button. Also, if I completely make a mess and end up with an ill-fitted stack of blocks, I do not have a reset button on my game box. I am just left with lots of ill-fitting blocks stacked up in jagged ways that continually poke at my edges until I figure out what exactly to do with them.

So what do I do with them??

 

~⊱⊹⊰
14 Mar 2009

comforting calculations

 

I love mathematics. I love the curve and angles of the numbers themselves, and love the universal language they can explain. No word-based language can be understood across not just borders but worlds and planets the way math can! Science, axioms, theorems, proofs all construct a factual and objective way to describe the world in which we live. Math is not cold as many mistake it to be, math can be warm and beautiful, too, like fractals and patterns in nature. Music is based on mathematical principles, too. Playing a masterful piano piece is no different than solving a puzzle to have its one perfect outcome. If music derives its pleasurable properties from math, then math is beauty, too.

For me, math has always been more than about homework or a degree on my bookshelf, it is about understanding and defining the world around me. Geometry describes physical mathematical relationships; in my life, I am always looking for how new knowledge and new people can fit into my existing life. How can I fit these new social circles inside the circumference of my already predefined life? And much like math, sometimes the dilemmas are imaginary. Sometimes the numbers (or people) I deal with are irrational. Similar to solving for x in a complex algebraic equation, my mind will mull over a complex situation until it identifies the variables, the constants... and anything else missing. Math is not just numbers, math is not just beauty, math is all of life.

My first "serious" relationship lasted for ... well, forever so far. Although he is my best friend now, we were schoolyard crushes during our alleged formative years. We met in a 4th grade PROMISE classroom (a pullout program for "gifted/talented" kids), back when I think he still believed girls had cooties. We would talk, and he would walk me back to class; I would swoon as he walked away on to his class, falling into my chair thinking "how romantic!" By 6th grade, we had moved on to dropping notes in each others' lockers. And talking on the phone all night. This was spurred on by our mutual ease at doing math homework: we were two of five 5th graders from our elementary school selected for a new advanced math program in our school district! This meant we had summer school together for the months between 5th and 6th grade. And once his mother came up with the brilliant idea of carpooling into town for summer school with my mom, him and I spent a whole lot more time together involuntarily. At first, we resisted and he insisted on sitting in the front seat while I would sit alone in the back every day. I remember the last week of summer school he was finally okay with sitting in the back seat with me; his mother drove a Lincoln Continental, so it's not like I could even lean over and touch him if I wanted to. He was safe from my girl cooties still!

By March that same school year he had written and dropped a note in my locker asking me to be his girlfriend, because I was "such a likeable person". I answered yes to his simple addition problem (me 1 + you 1). We "went around" (as the kids called dating in school back then) through most of middle school, just writing notes and talking and talking and talking to each other. Constantly! We never held hands, we never kissed. We didn't need to. He was my missing variable... or so I had hoped. In reality, this equation was unsolvable from the start. By the end of my 9th grade year, my former boyfriend and now best friend came out to me. (Apparently the variable I was missing was a penis. And my "upper limits" were too big, I am sure, as well.) He cared for me deeply, as I did for him... but it would always be just that - a solid, true, loving friendship.

I wrote a series of poems for him over the course of 6th grade - 9th grade called the Missing Variable series. Maybe once I get my scanner working one day I will share them (the formatting is difficult in a simple text editor).

I love mathematics and its comforting calculations. And, it's a love that I can proof.

 

~⊱⊹⊰
22 Mar 2010

 

 

Sunflower Snail Mail

In this world of undo and recall, the entire art and science of letter writing has dire consequences. Think about it... A text or IM is received near-instantly, an email or phone call create instant accessibility, but a letter does not only take up more in the time-space continuum, it locks a moment in time preserving it for the near-future. The words written by the sender days earlier, now - today! - mean something to the recipient. However, in this world of instant hi and reply... what's the likelihood the meaning is no longer the same to the sender at the time the recipient is reading it?

I wondered this for the past few days, afraid to commit any of my thoughts to paper, only to send them away for someone else to keep, scrutinize, and hold me to. It was almost a little unnerving, the fact that it was causing me anxiety at all, considering I was the queen of letter writers back in the prehistoric days before the commonality of internet and cell phones. What if I wrote something foolish? Or misspelled a word in ink? ...What if the recipient and I had a huge falling out in the 1-3 days the post office took to deliver the letter...? So, the sooner the better is an axiom and not a cliche??

All these thoughts only fueled my constant late state of procrastination, and I did not ever get around to writing my letter over the weekend as planned. I even had "buying stationary" and "get a new calligraphy pen set" on the list held by a magnet to the refrigerator, in preparation for this momentous flashback occasion of Letter Writing! I am a woman of action and overzealous gestures, an artist with the written word! A writer by choice, even an amateur poet. Yet... here I was, essentially speechless for this man.

Not even five days passed since our conversation extolling our mutual love of snail mail, and only three days since I provided my new old friend with my address. I rarely check the mail at these new apartments (it's just not convenient), but today I decided to brave the wannabe snow and see what was inside. Monday's mail had pleasantly provided me with my new Starbucks Gold card and coupons for free coffee and eats, so I suppose I was feeling lucky.

And wouldn't you know it? I was. I was lucky!

I had mail.

And at that moment I realized... Who's the slacker (slackette?) now?

Gotta love a man with follow-through!

I wrote my letter finally, after turning around from the mailboxes at my complex and seriously going on the stationary hunt. (I did not find what I wanted, but I did purchase some cute general occasion cards.) My letter is now all ready for tomorrow morning's mail; in fact, I will deliver it personally to the post office on my way to work. In 1-2 days my recipient will have the much anticipated sunflower snail mail in his hands.

All I can do is smile and wait. And smile some more...

~⊱⊹⊰
23 Feb 2010