number theory! - topology and projected plane (n-potential)

So work did suck that night. Stayed up til 4 to handoff a document my project manager didn't even bother handing off til late the next day, and worst thing, the doc never got reviewed by the client. I showed up to the meeting today and found instead a note (yes, a handwritten note, in highlighter no less) indicating that the meeting had been cancelled. I went back to work to find an e-mail from a few moments before the meeting with a cancelled notice. I'd been in work before hand just to ensure I could catch a message like this in time, so I wouldn't waste my time. No go. Wasted time. Awesome. I can't stand dead time.

However, there were some actual awesome things today. First, the guy who sits in the cubicle next to me is fun. He's a mathematician and philosopher. I know, awesome right. He'd been just moments away from a master's thesis and suddenly found the thesis ridiculous and circular; not that his work was ridiculous but that the process and audience was ridiculous. The project is endless, and this endless aspect was just not worth pursuing for him.

It's great for me because that means a great mind I can tap. He's about the same age, maybe a bit older than me, but I can ask him smart things and he knows what I'm talking about, and has his own very distinct interest I can tap. Very cool for me.

And as some of you know, I'm working on a manuscript (one of the many I always seem to be playing with) about space. I don't know whether this is the same one with which I'm trying to articulate triangulated space and the repercusions of it, but I've been intrigued in the last year or so with spaces. I've asked some random questions with this regard; some of you have been kind enough to share and attempt to answer my questions. Some very well. (Thank you.) For example, "How does music function spatially in terms of physical body?" or "How does restraint function spatially in music?" As well as some questions regarding color and music, space and color, and etc.

I received an amazing response to the "How does restraint function spatially in music?" I'm still thinking through some of it. Very exciting. I still don't know how or in what form much of this will take on the page. But I'm very excited about it.

Anyway, so being as this cubical neighbor has an extensive math and philosophy background, you can see why I might be giddy about such a proposition. So today, I asked him if he'd worked with number theory. (Random question with potentially no result, however, I just try to ask the questions that come to me. I don't know their relevance if I don't ask. And the relevance often makes itself apparent.)

Of course he cocked his head, scuewed his eyes and asked, "Why do you want to know?"

Anywho, through the course of his response, he told me about a class he took. He says, there's about three major branches of mathmatics, one of which is called, "topology." He said basically that this math focuses on spaces (gee, I wonder if that struck a cord with me) and how these spaces can be measured, and thus how these spaces can be created.

He said he loved this type of math because his relationship to numbers is very spatial. He loved building these possible shapes in his head and turning them about (again in his head) to look at them in different ways. He mentioned that one day in class, his professor wrote an equation on the board that was different that he'd encountered. As he processed in his mind the equation, he got stuck. The professor turned from the blackboard back to his students and laughed at seeing my office peer. My office peer's expression was that of someone who's head's been frozen from eating super cold ice cream too fast. The shape equated was impossible. There's no way to build the shape nor measure it. It's impossible.

It was at that point that my office peer said that he was done. He could not conceive of continuing with that branch. Though he loved shapes and their potential, a shape of no shape and no possible application was just too much. So, he decided to try his hand instead at tech comm. (This also has an interesting story attached, but I'll try to finish this story first.)

So of course this concept of ‘topology’ becomes an immediate interest. For two reasons: 1. a study of spaces, which fits directly with much of the research I’m doing regarding these various poetry manuscripts but also this work I’m doing with Beckett (and even Paul Auster); and, 2. this impossible space that’s ‘created’ nonetheless (called, something like, ‘projected plane’) is impossible to ignore as a possible means of research and ability to attempt to articulate the ‘void’ in Beckett’s work. Very exciting.

Anyway, with regard to the other story about my office peer trying his hand at tech comm (this is also too interesting to pass up): he says, unfortunately for him (or fortunately, however you look at it), he comes from a long line of people who constantly try their hand at new things. He says his dad was a (and I forget all the careers, not jobs, he listed) lawyer, a real estate agent, a teacher, etc. His mom was a lawyer, a court stenographer, a counselor, a history teacher, a counselor again, and now an English teacher. I’m sure I missed a few. I was amazed because these were whole careers, not just jobs that one usually moves around it.

So he says he blames his background for his not really knowing what he wants to do, because his parents have always been of the mindset that you should always do exactly what you want to do. How interesting is that?

Anyway, thought I’d share.

I also had an awesome lunch with a kindred spirit at work. V asked to have lunch with me because he’d been craving a pure intellectual discussion at work. I think it was good for me. I haven’t been able to talk to him for some time. It was awesome because he said to me that I wasn’t allowed to let tech comm destroy me creatively; that I did need to pursue (what he calls) my half baked ideas and allow them to fully cook. He’s asked that regardless of what I do, if I’ll let him help me sometimes in my research.

People amaze me sometimes. There are pockets of moments. We just have to keep searching and hope we recognize them.

It always makes me feel like I need to get my real work done (not tech comm stuff) and need to just keep going, keep pursuing. Keep writing.

This weekend I hope to get my research proposal on Beckett done, and maybe have some time to work on some manuscript work.

Anyway, keep on trucking all you all.

:0)

~J