Lost in Space

For those of you who have an interest in math, you will recognize the drawing and text above. On that page the father of geometry is making a triangle with a  few straight lines.

What I really love about Euclid is the simple and elegant way he presented his work. On the surface, its very neat and tidy. Sit with it for a little bit though and the complexities emerge. Sometimes subtly, sometimes they're in your face.

In the end though he wraps it all up so beautifully, "Therefore..." he says at the end of most of his propositions, then summarizes what the problem was about.

When you're walking into a math problem, even the simplest one, there is a comfort in knowing that the answer is there. Just waiting for you to get to it. Holding its glass and ready to say "cheers" when you arrive.

Its the steps in the middle that are a bitch sometimes. In order to get that little triangle drawing to look like that on your page, you've gotta do some work. That work become slightly more difficult if you're not on speaking terms with calculus or even algebra.

Suddenly, the words on the page, the one's you though you knew, become something different altogether. The known becomes strange and you're in the tick of it, not sure how you'll get to the "Therefore" of the whole thing.

In the beginning, I felt so open to learning what this current problem had to teach me. Looking back, its so clear that the openness came from not knowing what I would have to go through. Like the Fool from the tarot. The one who smiles as he leaps off the cliff with nothing to keep his body or heart from breaking but all the while certain he will land softly.

Now I'm in it and everything has changed. I can see the "Therefore", but I have no idea how I'll get there. The work that I have to do feels so overwhelming and I feel so unlike myself.

I want to yell. Lament aloud, tell you about my weak body, broken heart and confusion. Or about the rhythms, patterns and ways of being that I no longer inhabit. The one's that will never be mine again.

But I can't.

I'm lost in space and in the middle of that page. And this book is so long, and the next proposition just around the corner. Again and again.