The Admirable Number Pi

Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six two six four three. That's about as long as I can remember. How long can a number run, you ask? About forty feet, in the case of the admirable number Pi. The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.

What is a number, first of all? Isn't it something between zero and nine? How can a puny Greek letter, that which resembles a shack with a corrugated tin roof, also be considered a number?

And how important can a number be, anyway? We all hold numbers un-dear. The mere image of numbers sends us scuttling away for cover (at least our minds do the running away for us). How can something so inexplicably long and endless be of so much weight to civilization?

Mathematicians think they know the answer. They are both human and intellectual, so they think they hold more authority than anyone else to explain the universality of the number Pi. Ask them, and they go on explaining about circles and diameters and ratios and peripheries. You feel feeble and unimportant just listening to them. Mathematicians are like the numbers they study -- in the name of preserving self-worth you end up scurrying away the first chance you get.

Physicists think they know the answer. They, too, are both human and intellectual. But they think that they hold more authority than mathematicians, because to them physics encompasses everything else in science, mathematics included. Ask them about Pi, and they start babbling about the universe, cosmological constants, and spherical coordinate systems. "Spherical what?", you ask. Exactly my point. Hurry away, then.

The Egyptian scribe Ahmes (c. 1800 BC) thinks he knows the answer. He is intellectual, too, no doubt. And he thinks he holds more authority than mathematicians and physicists combined, because he was both mathematician and physicist. He is the first person to whom the discovery of Pi is ascribed, and he got to within two-hundredths of the modern value by simply dividing 256 by 81. Ah, numbers again.

And so you continue running.

The pageant of personalities claiming to have been gifted the ability to discern the importance of the number Pi doesn't stop at page's end. It can go on across a table, through the air, over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky, through all the bottomless, bloated heavens. Some will claim utmost academic authority, armed with diplomas and certificates and thick spectacles, while some will claim divine inspiration. Some will do so with the passion of a swarm of bees defending their colony from being de-honeyed.

But at the end of the day, when someone asks, "what is the number Pi?", what do we answer? Do we say what the mathematicians say? Or do we pretend we like physics, and babble off about cosmological blah blah? Do we refer the inquisitor to Ahmes (not that we know where his remains lie)?

You may or may not take me seriously, but I think I know the answer. I am not an intellectual, but at least I am human enough to understand that knowledge, like the number Pi, is practically endless. I do not claim to hold any authority, but I nonetheless fancy that the bounds of human wisdom, like the number Pi, cannot be comprehended at a glance, by calculation or imagination, not even by wit -- that is, by comparison to anything else in the world. By nature we have limits, but of all the things that make us human, it is our intelligence that is least bound.

Yes, the number Pi is a mathematical constant, one that scientists use to try to understand the universe. But it is also as it appears -- a shack with tin roofing, a house. It represents everything we know and are about to know, that shelters us from the ignominy of ignorance and incapacity. It symbolizes our departure from dinosaurhood, our march to brilliance. The number Pi is us -- allegory to how far humanity has come in terms of reason, and to how much further it seeks to stride.

That we have come so far, from being mere cavemen, to mathematicians and physicists and modern day Ahmeses, is testament to the virtual boundlessness of our intellect. Whether we are children, adults, or veterans of the world, there will always be that extra room in our seemingly limited brains for things new and untrodden. All new knowledge is initial, because it never ends, much like every single digit in the hierarchy of the admirable number Pi.


"It keeps on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nidging a sluggish eternity
to continue."
-from Pi, by Wislawa Szymborska, 1976

Im back .With baduy songs.

I haven't posted in a long time, I know. And I'm sorry. I hope I can make it up to you with this self-deprecating post.

Someone asked me recently if there were any baduy songs in the playlist on my Walkman phone. In the name of retaining my pride, I immediately shot back, "absolutely not". But a faint hint of hesitation betrayed my otherwise cool response, and I was caught. My friend insisted on having a look at my playlist herself. In the end, I had to accede to her challenge, but not before a challenge of my own:

Lemme see your playlist too.

So we swapped phones, and ended up laughing at each other's musical tastes. We're all baduy to some degree, I discovered. And you're not exempt.

Here's a list of the five most baduy songs on my playlist:

5 -- Barbie Girl (Aqua) -- Datu and I penned an overly obscene version of this song a loooong time ago. I'll post the edited lyrics here sometime soon, but be prepared. It's friggin dirty.

4 -- Boom Boom (Vengaboys) -- at first, I thought the lyrics said, "Boom boom boom boom, I want to be a broom..."

3 -- Dr Jones (Aqua) -- God. Help. Me. This is probably one of the most baduy songs ever, and that includes songs not even on my playlist.

2 -- Dragostea Din Tei (O-zone) -- This song by a Romanian "boy band" doesn't really sound "boy-ish". Sounds more gay band to me. Plus, it has one of the worst music videos ever.

and the top spot goes to...

1 -- Ride a White Horse (Laid Back) -- Baduy singer, baduy lyrics, baduy video. Nuff said.

Image Post

On men and apples

Men are like apples on trees.

The best ones are at the top of the tree.

Most boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling from above and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy.

So the apples at the top are left, thinking something is wrong with them, when in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's man enough to climb all the way to the top.

I Owe

There is much I owe
to those I do not love.

The relief in accepting
they are closer to another.

Joy that I am not
the wolf to their sheep.

My peace be with them
for with them I am free,
and this, love can neither give,
nor know how to take.

I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,
I understand
what love does not understand.
I forgive
what love would never have forgiven.

Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.

My trips with them always turn out well.
Concerts are heard.
Cathedrals are toured.
Landscapes are distinct.

And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are rivers and mountains
well known from any map.

It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a shifting, thus real, horizon.

They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don't owe them anything",
love would have said
on this open topic.

I love Blake Lewis

I love love love Blake Lewis!

...and Melinda Doolittle.

...and Sabrina Sloan.

échouer dans l'amour

Failing in love
Isn't the same as not loving.
It doesn't let you off the hook.
It doesn't mean you're free to not love.

Death

Death --
more plenteous than all heaven
has tears to mourn it.
The slow dissolving of the great design.
The spiraling apart of the work of eternity.
The world and its beautiful particle logic,
all collapsed, all dead
forever.
We are failing,
failing --
The earth and the angels.

Who asks of the Order's blessing
with apocalypse descending?
Who demands more Life
when Death, like a protector,
blinds our eyes,
shielding from tender nerve
more horror than can be borne?
Let any being on whom Fortune smiles
creep away to death
before that last, dreadful daybreak
when all your ravaging returns to you,
and morning blisters crimson
and bears all life away.
A tidal wave of protean fire
that curls around the planet
and bares the earth,
clean as bone.

On moving, and moving on

For the nth time, I'm moving. No, I'm not talking about moving from one city or country to another, though that'd still make enough sense if you knew me well. I've moved around so many times, a job at Globe Trekker seems in store for me. But this time, I'm moving blogs. Just blogs, yes, but it's still a blog, you know. It's the electronic equivalent of my life, the closest I can go to making an autobiography. And now I'm moving again. From xanga to LJ, friendster to multiply, there's no shortage of movement, whether with me or with my blogs. Which, in any other case, would be enough to drive me nuts, but my reason for moving this time is exactly that -- I'm going nuts. Over the past, over now. And I figured that if I didn't move soon, I'd have to be committed to a mental institution, and who wants that? Seriously. I'm going crazy.

In a lot of ways, moving is just like moving on. My blog, electronic and lifeless as it is, is me. It's my personal overdose of honesty, a computer-based window into me that even I, sometimes, find surprisingly refreshing. Whenever I feel like talking to someone (and most of the time, no one is available), I type everything down. And even if I don't exactly publish everything I type down, it's still a respite. It's my personal escape, my excuse from the world.

Now I feel like things have changed. My perspective has shifted, so everything else has to shift too, personal escape hatches included. That's why I'm moving. I have a past that seems too heavy for me to carry around, and sad as it is, I have to leave some luggage behind. I have to say hello to new things, to new possibilities; there's a whole new game I have to play now. I've warmed up. I'm ready.

I'm moving on.