Dear L,
An interesting thing happened last few weeks. Since I have stopped getting on the internet without a purpose of scrolling, for the lack of a better word, I am finding myself at a very unusual state. I kept thinking about the things I picked up on the inter-webs. A video I watched recently; about the possibility slowly cooling down a matrix-like simulation to go on almost forever after the universe goes cold & dark; it’s a neat physics trick. I read about a woman in Kabul, writing about the storm in her life when the US left Afghanistan, before the Taliban takeover; quite a gripping account. I read a piece about how consistency is being engineered so well, that some human skills considered sacred is becoming mechanised. Characters from novels are also popping up; like Kazuo Ishiguro’s artist who took part in Japanese War propaganda. I am even revisiting about topology, which I stopped right after college.
I do not remember when some branches of mathematics became interesting to me, but I am fairly certain it was because I had time to play with it. I do also not study topology now, I just read the rules, the axioms, and play little games with it; it is a lot of fun once one gets started. Same way I have time to play around glass window cleaning techniques.
Growing up in India, big glass windows were as alien to me as Schmalzkuchen. I knew they exist, but I didn’t see many. One of the big challenges for me living in Northern Europe was cleaning them; managing the streaks that is left behind by a squeegee or a fabric. The trick I found is to alternate the direction of sweeping. On an orthogonal sweep, streaks from the previous sweep are being pulled thin, and then on the following orthogonal sweep, it gets thinner on the other direction and so on and so forth until the streaks are almost invisible. Glass window cleaners all over the world are probably scoffing at this revelation, seems so very obvious. And I probably don’t even know if there are more obvious things I am missing.
What is odd is that all of a sudden I can individually address bits of content I have consumed & experiences I had, and I keep thinking about their implications, their meaning, their mathematics. On any other weekend, it would all be a blur, the entire week would be a blur. In other words, these weeks have been more of an experience rather than a random chunk of time in a calendar. I suppose this is the exact same reason a trip to a different place is so very enticing, because it breaks the blurriness of the daily days. What I am realising is that the day to day of the working class with all its mundanity doesn’t have to be boring or a blur.
One prevalent cultural push that we all probably have come across is the “YOLO”; “life is short”, and other ideas along these lines. These are oddly overused psychological tools. I think life is not actually short, in fact, it is quite long. For me, and likely for you too, there is plenty of time for us to saunter in our minds, our books, our streets, our cafes, our movies and video games; if only we stop feeling obliged we to experience everything, everywhere all at once.
I have made a point to myself to push away all my maintenance obligations away from my off days as much as possible. Specially with the luxury of working from home, it is even easier. On a work-day I just continue working, just switching from my professional obligations to personal ones. That way my weekends are almost completely free. If privileged enough, when one removes all the addictions, compulsions & obligations, it is surprising how hard it is to fill one’s time! Try it! Each day feels so very long. Long enough to read an entire novel! Or, spend a the entire day at a friend’s. As a matter of fact, I am on my way to a friend’s home as I am writing this to you.
If I remember correctly, in the book Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman, Dr. Feynman wrote about how he made a game around cutting green beans while working at a restaurant (and had a bloodied incident). The anecdote stuck with me because even Richard Feynman chose to include it in his reminiscences. I think life opens up at its most mundane. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of inspiration that urges us to rise above the mundane, but mundanity is a gift, ask anyone brewing coffee every morning. The enemy of being inspired is not mundanity, but avoidance of it. Even during a months long bike trip, packing and unpacking my camp had become so mundane! But mundanity is beautiful because right at its edge is boredom, and beyond that lies agency, adventure and amazement. When the act of camping became truly mundane, I could finally have the adventure I wanted to have; I could push the boundaries of what I felt safe in. I could be cold, wet, alone and comfortable.
Best, A