All posts in category amateur mathematician flies into the sun

unsolvable word problems

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of yesterday. a woman is overwhelmed by the memories of the first time she ever did anything. a man has no recollection of the last time he did anything. a child does not appear in this story.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of scent. all separate parts join together as a whole. name the value of a single part. prioritize a single recurring sensation. freedom to breathe in, a conscious act of breathing out. this is some semblance of life.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of shadows. add up the things and people no longer here. also, the activities, the rituals. stretch a taut coalescence of the before over a bony skeleton of songs. e.g., little maggie and mathey grove caper in the yellow lamplight spilled across the hardwood floor, a dream of distance as anchors tug, hold fast.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of dreams. of dusty corners. of regret. of a swallowing up. of a diving down. of a spreading out. of a lossless life. of listless eyes. of a luster tarnished by your breath. of every day, an ending, every day a sort of beginning.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of nothing. fill in the blank to receive extra credit: _________________.

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by sean on July 28, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in amateur mathematician flies into the sun, anchors, dreams, long division, memory, music, parts of the whole, senses, shadows, summer, sundays, the antidote is also the poison, words

Posted by sean on July 28, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/28/unsolvable-word-problems/

continuing studies in probability

I have suddenly begun encountering my neighbors all the time. Maybe they read what I wrote about them. Actually that is highly improbable. It’s funny to think about, though. Yes, it is. To me, at least. That they would intentionally make themselves more accessible to me based upon reading my musings on why I never see them is hilarious. But it’s more likely that this is related to the phenomenon I encounter with things like mist and nemesis birds, wherein something once recognized and acknowledged suddenly becomes omnipresent. Yes, that must be it. I must let it simmer longer, though.

A poem-fragment-something of mine called “The sights and sounds of leaving” appears in the 2012 issue of Paper Nautilus. Being a paper nautilus it only creeps out into the world in paper form. Copies are available here. I have one more forthcoming publication in 2013 (an erasure text) but that will likely be it for a while. The submission process strangles the life out of me and punctures holes into my dreamy writing life (for an extended even darker view, see also: this). I am reclaiming that life.

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by sean on February 7, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in absurdity, amateur mathematician flies into the sun, decoder rings, neighbors, probability, swirly patterns, writing

Posted by sean on February 7, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/02/07/continuing-studies-in-probability/

unfinished studies in probability

I am trying to determine how it is possible that I never see my immediate neighbors. We literally share walls. And I am out in the streets at least twice a day walking Farley. Yet I never encounter them. How is this possible. What are the odds of me seeing even one of them? That’s what I’d like to know, though I’m not at all a gambling man, just a curious one. Is it because I leave at random times, and they also leave at random times, making our odds of intersection quite low? Or is it because I leave at random times and they leave at the same times, also making our odds of encountering each other low. I know that I never leave at the same time, so perhaps I am the reason we never meet. My erratic behavior may be the cause of our never meeting. However, some people in the neighborhood I see quite often, even though they don’t even live on my street. Why them, I ask, why not the ones so close by. This I don’t understand.

Sometimes I look out a window and I see my immediate neighbors but they appear so far away, like they are in another dimension, another world even, or as if in a dream, and I consider that I may never know them for it is too late, too much time has passed and so we are destined to remain strangers. Somehow, in some hidden unreachable part of my insides, I think I know this is true, and for some reason it saddens me, though I don’t quite know why, but I think it may have to do with how I have created personalities and lives for all of them and the stories of their lives in my head are ongoing and can grow quite elaborate at times, and for reality to now impose on these stories would ruin them and probably depress me.

Meanwhile, the other day as I approached the revolving door at work from outside, someone also approached it from inside, and we pushed simultaneously and the door swung with ease, depositing each of us in places opposite of where we had been, and this was pleasing to me, for it rarely happens, and in general I am ambivalent to revolving doors, yet when serendipity such as this occurs I am reminded of their occasional magic, leaving me with a lingering sense of connection to my partner in door-pushing whom I didn’t know and didn’t speak to nor do I want to know or ever speak to.

4 Comments

by sean on January 17, 2013 • Permalink