this post made sense to me several days ago.. not so sure about it anymore..

you ever feel like there’s a little squeaky voice in your head? i do.. does that make me weird?

despite a rather enticing opportunity once, i never really pursued it. and i think that starts off this thought process below.. namely, about the kind of person running this show. mostly because that decision had two paths. one: a little crazy, incredibly challenging, an amazing compliment, and way outside my comfort zone. the other: ..err.. i guess it was financial in the end. (none of that is to say i regret my decision.. despite my mind’s wanderings and the occassional “yeah.. but what if..”s, i wouldn’t trade what i’ve come away with from my decision for most anything)

so, to put this in some terms that i enjoy, i’m going to consider all this slightly mathematically..

i feel sometimes as though there are two people in here, in this “soul carrying around a corpse” (epictetus). there is the one who loves euclidean geometry.. that is, straight lines, predictable behaviors, logical conclusions, axiomatic frameworks.. congruency, parallels, and postulates. this person loves stability, control, consistency. slopes are known and can be forecast well ahead of time. there are no contradictions, no exceptions, no surprises.. given a sharp pencil and a quality compass, this person could declare themselves god. and sometimes they even believe that..

but then, on the other side, is the one who lives on the edge of math and philosophy early in the 20th century. this child walks the sharp line with the europeans, the wild-eyed germans, the calm pipe-smoking dutch, the always revolutionary french. this boy lives with chaos and uncertainty and lives in the wide-open spaces between the atoms and the possibilities. keep tightening a loop in space and you’ll eventually come to a point. is the cat in schrodinger’s box alive or dead? ..or both? ..what would you see on a train moving the speed of light? ..why can i know the position of an object but not the velocity.. or the velocity and not the position? that these questions don’t have answers (yet) thrills the child of chaos. talk about wave and particle theory and, though he couldn’t really understand the details, he’d still rocket through the roof in a burst of quantum exuberance. yes, partly because this kid is a complete and utter nerd.. but more so because this edgy heart realizes what all this means – that there is no measure to.. well, anything.

there are two pieces here, two competing voices..
the one, a narcissus or an emil, a father: planned, ordered, concise, practical, level.
the other, a goldmund or a demain, a son: unpredictable, unpredictable, infinite, unpredictable, impassioned.

most of the time, i let the father in me win. most decisions by me are considered, weighed with a near scientific zest for accuracy (and the inevitable uncertainty), given time to grow (and fester), and finally, when the more certain path for success or safety is found (or the most conservative one is settled for), i’ll cautiously start putting the parts in motion.

..but every once in a while the son screams, jumps wildly off the little horse, and tears through the woods on the path taken by none, the one untread, unestablished, unconsidered.. and he stops in an opening to make a snow angel just to be a little extra ridiculous. every once in a while, when the father wants to discuss kant and the critique of pure reason, the son slaps his hands on his ears and yells a lung-full of “i kant take it anymore“, looks up to see the effects of such an awful play on words, and falls to the floor bent over double, clutching his stomach with painful belly laughs racking his body.

this boy asks questions, sometimes loudly, while i’m clicking away all day: “what are you doing this for? who cares about this? what if you left.. not in a few weeks but right now? why haven’t you seen the world? do you think you’ll have more time later in life? do you not understand the fierce urgency of ‘now‘? are you happy with your situation? no, i mean it, really? what if you really were a book? do you think i’d read about you? come on.. get a move on living! if you don’t give me a voice, a real voice, i’ll eventually fade away.. and what will you be then?”

there’s trouble with this boy, though.. or, at least, that’s what the father tells me. the father tells me that living off the cuff is romantic.. but ill-advised. he tells me, realism bleeding from his chest, that living in the moment is, by definition, short-lived. the long-term effects are another story all-together and consistently ignored by the child who refused to believe that space and time are definite structures. a child’s heart, mind, and knowledge, he tells me, like the boys stature; small and awkward. and, the father tells me, not all energy is good, for this child has often been the force behind the destructive energy that sometimes overwhelms the traveling pair.

so what about the geometry? well, geometry has greek roots: geo = earth, metria = measure. and since you could make a few transferences – earth = world our perception – you can say that geometry is the measure of what we perceive. i don’t know if it works but i think the idea behind it: i think it’s always good to put our perspective(s) into perspective. personally, i’m starting to see that my perspective(s) have been somewhat more limited than i originally considered.. they haven’t explored this other world, the world of (infinite) possibility enough.. the world of chance and risk. and it’s not that i don’t know how i feel about that, i do: i don’t like it one bit.. but there’s that father in me – “you don’t want that world. think about and plan for the future. make the safe choice and you won’t get burned.”

i’m not going to go out there tomorrow and turn everything on its head.. but i’m going to at least let the boy have his words.