• Masochism

  In the midst of a lecture regarding the tangent spaces of manifolds and covariant tensors, our traveler is exposed as a student of mathematics; the mathematician. Yet the mathematician is not focused on the study of the language of nature this day. Instead the mathematician considers his predicament as he attempts to avoid the masochism through writing:

  I seem to have been born in such a way, conditioned in such a way that I seem to think or at least behave as if anything that is valid I should somehow have the capacity to comprehend. However, despite my peculiar ability to consider myself to be somehow special, I find myself at the edge of my ability to understand. I am lost with this material. Lost in a sea of symbolism, in a perfect storm of incomprehensible banter, and yet I find serenity; solace in my inability.

  However, it would seem that writing was destined to bring reprieve from the tumultuous mundane only temporarily. Upon finishing his manuscript, the mathematician is brought back into the fold with the ravenous fury of a terrible migraine, induced by the deafening whisper regarding mappings of a multi-linear and antisymmetric kind.

  A vision corrupts his focus and he is met with a glimpse, a searing sensation, ache-burn-grimace and gnash. The creak, a siren alarming–racing–thumping, coagulation diminishing. Screeching of rusted metal followed by heavy clunk. Chains stressed by brittle bone wrapped in minimal flesh; a thin membrane distinguishing an embodiment of darkened fear, acclimated to pain, from the shadows. As the vision fades the mathematician realizes he is trapped in a walking grave. He recalls that he died years back. His perdition must then be this aimless forced wandering along a turbulent surface, continuously awaiting to be graced by the pale rider’s presence, longing for the ethereal kiss of death.

• Justification of Suffering

  On a park bench overlooking the miserable injustice of childhood, the mathematician shared discourse with the psychologist. It was here that the mathematician was informed of the dreaded painfulness of boredom. The psychologist shared the learned information regarding how boredom was processed by the body as pain, yet the details of certainty were lacking. The mathematician attempted to convey how glorious the fruit of his labor would be, but ultimately found it wanting. Then in an attempt to justify his suffering, the mathematician put faith in mental projections of a future nonexistent, but ideal and teeming with hope:

  If I can choke through this infantile banter, I hope to find myself in an intelligent space to plan my escape from this nonsensical train of thought.

  The justification was unconvincing, yet silence reigned within the neighborhood of the park bench. An eternity drifted past and the mathematician raised his eye to the heavens; becoming conscious of his fleeting time, he recalled the collector of prepuces and laughed himself towards misery in consideration of Prufrock’s verse. Singing a sonnet still yet composed, babbling a limerick to a deafened stone, crying out to the fountain of youth’s commode.

• The Cunt

  The mathematician arose with a compulsion towards tea and biscuits accompanied with a black Cavendish basin to set ablaze. Alas, such desires, much like carnal counterparts, would seem to go unfulfilled more oft than not. No milk and honey flowing from divine cunt was found in the neighborhood about the mathematician’s position in space-time this morn. Rather, corporeal erotica satiated the ravenous hunger of the mathematician’s inner demons.

  Over lunch the mathematician described the Cunt:

  Oh yes, Ann, she is quite the Cunt…a linguist too! Her linguistic expertise involves the most carnal of communications!

  Unamused the bitch looks on with tendered disgust imparted by her electric glare. Disappointed, the mathematician retreats to the thought of an ideal day in an improper existence. Interruption ensues, as a fleshy hammer prepares to knock in the cloacal obsession. An advert presents itself.

  “Take care not to produce a posterior rose as you investigate near the coccyx with your phallic delights!”

• The Cinema

  While envisioning tight sphincters strangulating the journeyman, the mathematician accelerated the arrival of what would eventually be a crusted milky stain on the surface of the cotton fibers composing a burgundy turtleneck. Such cinematography, lacking in direction, but exceeding in effect and repose. Of course, such repose is the obvious aftermath of such invigorated endeavor. Yet, since the dice of perpetuity were thrown he has felt trapped in the role, not unlike Duchovny preserved within the plasticized tube of the age. Eventually the climax fades from mind, memory, time, but never from the tube.

  But while this stain was still fresh, a precious scent permeated the comfortable space. The aroma of creme sipped from a blackened basin, a medium of smoke enhancing the luxury of climax. Reminiscent of more exotic company, the mathematician spent a lonely evening contemplating his sorrow with the dreaded imagery of awaking to the sensuous nothing on the morrow. Always a dream, seemingly conscious, the stream ebbs and flows through time and space, whatever that might be. Pulling and twisting and tugging and roaring until all are drowned by its cold embrace.

• Reminiscing Tribulation

  Within a different interval of his journey through space-time, the mathematician seems to recall himself trained as an infantryman. He finds there are times in which he re-imagines his experiences and yearns for such a sense of practicality and purpose as provided by the military-industrial complex he once served. The lack of intellectual masochism warms the appeal of this lead filled salvation. Of course, that was the original intent—a lead salvation from this dimming plane with Valhalla awaiting.

  Even having survived his failure, there are times that he longs to fire his rifle upon the enemy manifested by his superiors. He has no hate for the individuals dehumanized by his training, yet he longs to assist them in their departure from this plane of existence, if only to further the purpose provided him. He considers a statement attributed to Kissinger:

            …dumb, stupid animals to be used…

  Yet, he cares not. A phantom limb, the rifle is missing. To fire the rifle. Satisfaction in solving such a concrete problem with ammunition and a clear perspective. A painful expense through twisted, complex meanderings in the disturbed void of hope.

• The Spring

  This period was torturous for the mathematician. So many new languages, but he never spent the time to familiarize himself with the traditions of any of them. Some may have thought it disrespectful or irresponsible, but far to the contrary, this was his sanity—his greatest responsibility.

  Yet, what if he was never sane? Was a person ever truly sane if they aspired to be detached from reality? Locked away in a porcelain tower of artificial systems and quantifiers? What was sanity, really? Perhaps it was simply a means of distancing a certain type of people from the rest of operant society…

            “You must have a disorder if you cannot function in the impossible world we have prepared for you!”

  A failed piece. Maybe these pills, will help you.

            “If we numb you enough, perhaps you won’t mind the mindless droning about that is your destiny as predetermined by your oh-so-caring benefactors.”

  Afraid for the purpose, forever a slave. Abused and remedial in a spiteful plane. Fret the contract, signed in blood, to work for your death, endlessly on.

• The Death of Gods

  The mathematician found himself in a lecture regarding rarefaction waves. While he found himself to be lost in the material, he was no longer tormented by this realization. Where once was a terrible concern about his lack of understanding, now resided a humbled form. He no longer assumed that he would be capable of comprehending all that was propounded by men. Yet, he had learned to accept this, as there was naught to be done about it. He decided that if mathematics was to demand his days and nights as an explicit god then he would forsake it. As his desire to live grew, the further away he drew from the gods of logic and reason, until they were dead to him.