13

May

Y – a delayed post from 04.15.13

how I probably answered math questions

When x is me, X + Y = confused, solve for Y

I was never very good at math. Ever. It’s really thanks to Philip and the determination of my high school math teacher to never see me in her class again that I passed. I only had to take one semester in college and I absolutely hated it. I had several tutors, read a couple Math for Dummies books, prayed for divine understanding every time I took an exam. I mostly got C’s. Nothing about algebra makes sense to me.

I get hung up on the letters.

I’ve been a biblio-linguiphile/amateur etymologist for quite some time now and to my not fully formed frontal lobe it did not make sense to see letters (or for that matter “imaginary numbers”) strung together with math symbols.

My high school math teacher tried to make me feel better by telling me about this movie that Barbara Streisand did with Jeff Bridges (The Mirror Has Two Faces). It’s this sort of romance, coming in to her own, kind of movie. Streisand plays an English Lit professor, Bridges is this math professor with strange ideas about how sex ruins relationships, they bond over baseball, and fall in love despite the odds, and I guess because Streisand loses like the equivalent of four dress sizes…

Anyway, I just never held much appreciation for the mathematical arts. The grand irony of my life is that though I’ve pursued things I enjoy to gain employment I spend a large portion of my days dealing with math; math, and budgeting, and numbers. It’s not quite algebra, and I get to make my Excel spreadsheets quite colourful, but a part of me loathes it all a bit. I think the mental block sets in when I imagine my life as the ideal “renaissance” woman: capable of art, math, science, philosophy, and sky diving or whatever, and I know that I fall short in the math area. I mean I have a hard time doing simple multiplication and division. I guess there’s always something to aspire to.

38 days ago Short URL Comments

The 26 Project

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21

Apr

D – a delayed post from 03.31.13

The first thing he noticed were her hands. The last he’d seen them they were open, lovely, graceful, a warm brown from her time spent in the sun, a little more wrinkled than they should be, but beautiful in their own way. She kept her nails short to play guitar and only wore one ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Her hands were shaped like her mother’s. This he knew from the last time he’d seen her.

Now, there was no softness to them. He noticed white knuckles, a slight tremor, her nails grown long and unkempt. Her hands, tightly clasped, the wrinkles stretched, a sickly pallor. Gone were the grace and loveliness.

He spoke soothing words to her. Whispered, “Peace. Rest. Trust me.”

A fragile thing crumbled in her hands, like the dusty wings of a butterfly, squashed from clinging to a false hope.

She let go.

60 days ago Short URL Comments

The 26 Project

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17

Apr

Z – a delayed post from 03.15.13

Zelda Sayre.

She was a bit of a firecracker, that one. I just finished a novel based on her life with Scott Fitzgerald. From just before her 18th birthday until her 40th year. It was sad. Very sad. I haven’t read much of either of their work. The Great Gatsby is under my belt, along with a collection of short stories and essays written by Scott: On Booze. I didn’t know Zelda had anything of her own until about a year ago. They called her his Flapper Girl Muse, a woman of the Jazz Age. But it seems Scott couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to be part of a cutting edge couple that set the trends or a man with a respectable wife.

The opening of On Booze is from a section called “Selections from Notebooks”. Apparently, Scott and Zelda both were in the habit of keeping ledgers of their lives… more lists than diaries they offer peculiar glimpses into their lives and projects. Anyway, the opening floored me. And I wonder if the Fitzgeralds had ever tapped into the full amount of power they possessed, how different would the world be? I’m enamored of his ability to tell a story in two sentences. Tell me that isn’t a mighty power.

Perfectly respectable girl, but only been drinking that day. No matter how long she lives she’ll always know she’s killed somebody.

And Zelda, with your wish to fully complete something, to find success in it, blocked in your pursuit by a fragile, jealous husband. I wish you’d gotten at least this:

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

Thanks for all that you did to help make it possible for a woman like me to write.

 

 

63 days ago Short URL Comments

The 26 Project

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