I'ts mid October. Just yesterday August was dawning and now fall chill has set in, leaving my head spinning trying to figure out how we lost September between sun-up and sun-down. I've always found it funny how this math class inspires me. Something about proofs that march in twos over the wall just makes me want to write. Something about the rational stark rules of the supplements and postulates makes the unformed faliable world of impossibilities seem somehow very possible. Uniform theorums with no variation are projected with a garish, raw blantantness. It's such a strict undecadant world that it honestly feels like a piece of art in and of itself. So shamelessly obvious that it provokes a sense of a disturbing piece of craftsmanship. Now granted I can equate parallel lines and transversals to an avant garde renegade art exhibit all I'd like and still not have even the vaguest notion of what it all means. Here I am making beauty out of bleakness and finding the only true literary mastery to be in the irony of the 'F' I'll be receiving in a few weeks.
I spent hours milling over the cold beauty of equations I don't understand and completely forgot to learn what it all means. Though now that I really think on it I think I prefer ignorance (not that I've got much choice in the matter at this point). If I truly understood this calculated world of angle bisectors, deviding straight down the center of congruency, there would be no more magic in it. When it is just this notion in the back of my mind, this massive enigma, I can give it the facade of anything I'd like. But once I open the book and comprehend the words then they've lost their mystery. A "corresponding angle postulate" must seem far less impressive when you actually know what it means to be "cut by a transversal". That sounds like some twisted spin-off of "Touched by an Angel" to me, but my mind is a mystery as to the reasoning of that one. I suppose, like the proofs, my mind would seem so much weaker and uninteresting if I really understood it. Maybe a proof would do me good.
Given: My mind is an enigma. Prove: Ignorance=bliss. My mind is ignorant, reason: Transitive property of enigmas. Ignorance is congruent to bliss, reason: Definition of alternating exterior states of being. The measurement of angle ignorance=the measurement of angle bliss, reason: Definition of angle congruency.
I guess when I break it down like that I've got no choice but to accept it. There are no mistakes in geometry. It all equates, everything checking out and proving itself. If proofs were a person I think I'd get quite annoyed with them. They're always forcing you to make impossible leaps, and then varify your reasons for it. Always searching for external validation; they're really quite needy. You don't get much in return for your work, either. You wind up proving the same answer you knew in the beginning. Sketching the same things over again and again on the tan desk top.
Papers make their way back to me now, destined once more for their original owner. Red lettering announces the reward for my efforts at the top of each sheet; "75", "43", "76". Some of my best grades in that class, so far. Yes, I think I'll leave it as an enigma. "50" makes its way back to me. Suddenly I'm very glad that I don't understand this hard empty world of Syllogism. I'm fond of my world of farces and language, a world that is so unpredictable you can immerse yourself in it forever and still be no closer to grasping it. Suddenly I'm very grateful to dance on the side of the street that you can never really understand. Staying on the safe side with constricting lines and reason that, once understood offers you nothing more to reason against just wasn't designed for me. If proofs were a disturbing art piece now would be the time I'd shudder and turn away from it, happy to remember the piece, but eternally thankful not to understand the artist's meaning. |
Submission Name: Proof Art
