Philosophical Mathematics (An Interpretation)

 

Drew the last Venn Diagram to explain something to a friend, which lead to a series of other pointless mathematical diagrams. I clearly have too much time on my hands. Selamat Hari Raya, everybody!

An Unlikely Prayer

I wish for my actions to be independent of irrational thought, yet dependent on a limitless capacity for compassion.

Please let me accept wholeheartedly the prospect of being wrong despite this burgeoning itch to always be right.

Grant me enough prudence to know when to think, when to decide, and when to stop.

Things I Encountered on a Highway at 3AM (Both Literally and Figuratively)

A swarm of insects
Although we differ greatly in size, humans and insects share one common ground--there is a predictive quality in our behavior patterns.

Ants learn by interaction; though their interactions are not quite as emotionally agonizing as the ones we are forced to endure.

Moths are attracted to light, just as we are drawn to enlightenment. In both cases, the end result is disorientation. In both cases, the desire for light is self-destructive.

A honey bee's stinger is its one and only mode of defense. Once it stings its victim, the bee's stinger is detached from its body and it will subsequently face death. Mankind's fate is doubly tragic-- our stings leave us not dead, but with a hollowness that derogates our will to live.

An eery mist
A fog covers the field where you sit cross-legged with a sickle and tobacco stained teeth. Hacked weeds and headless rodents surround your dreary patch of land. There is no way for me to convince you to leave your Godless shrine, so I choose to rescue the parts of my body that did not get lost in the grey.

Crows
A single crow is an omen. A murder of crows is an ending.

Sailors.

Some people live in split second transitions of daydreams.

Sailing steadfast on their mighty caravels.

Tying themselves tightly to the masts, hoping that monsoon winds will carry their cargo loaded vessels away from leaden waters; towards coasts where sunlight embellishes the shoreline with opulent hues of gold and ivory.

The hulls of their ships gleam like elephant tusks, spearheading the drifter's pursuit for soil and sand.

Uh Huh Honey.

 

Bigger

For in these cold Chi night's moon, you my light
If heaven had a height, you would be that tall
Ghetto to coffee shop, through you I see that all

I could do it, maybe one day
When you figure out you're gonna need someone
When you figure out it's all right here in the city
And you don't run from where we come from
That sound like Poetic Justice, Poetic Justice

Underwater, stove-top, blue flame scientist come out with your scales up
get baptized in the ocean of the hungry
(Humdi luli lalilulo, Humdi lulilalilu)
My niggas turn in to gods,
walls come tumblin'

Original rude boy, never am I coy
You can be a shorty in my ill convoy
Not to come across as a thug or a hood
But hon, you got the goods, like madeline woods

Fingerprints.

You popped up on my computer today.

My Skype went through a system update and by some technical mismanagement my profile picture changed to a picture of you.

I can't remember when or why I had changed it years ago. Maybe it was one of those cute couple-y things we succumbed to back then; the exact reason escapes me. The years have managed to trim the fuzzy edges of my memory of our relationship. All I'm left with is the stripped down core: we were good, right up until the point where we weren't. Nonetheless, I felt a sting. In that picture, your hair went past your eyebrows which could only mean it was taken a few weeks before we called it quits. You're sporting a 5 o'clock stubble, which rounds out the sombre look you wore so often. It's the image of you I've carried around all these years -- worn out and shabby, but composed in your own way.

You were a P.O. Box, a few swift strokes of the keyboard and a low-end web camera I stared into day in and day out. Continents still separate us after all these years, as it rightfully should. Why did you make a digital appearance again today after so many years of absence? My guess is as good as any. It hardly even matters. Fate and destiny is a phase that I've thankfully grown out of. After all, symbols and signs are what we make of them.


Since that juncture of my life, I've been wary of online communication. Everyone is the idealized version of themselves here, myself included. It's all quite formulaic.

Hide as much as you like!  Reveal as little as possible!  Be intellectual up to a point!  Write with wit!  Care but don't care too much because the world is going to end anyway!  Words are like windows so choose them carefully!

It amazes me how much everyone has been avoiding physical contact with each other. Just look at how seamlessly our interactions have been formatted into web protocols over the last couple of years, i.e. count the amount of conversations you have on your phone/online vs. the ones you have in the real world.

I suppose it's the safest way of keeping each other company. Safer than sharing a common space with someone new. Safer than whatever it was that we had.