Thursday, November 20, 2008

phi

i have a new found appreciation for numbers
which is funny because
in school when i was smaller
i hated them
loathed them
i feel comfortable saying they were the bane of my existence

no really

they'd turn into spastic monkeys running amuck in my already "sorry overhead compartments are full those will have to fit snugly under the seat in front of you" brain 

later i would find out that the cramped room in my number section was actually a mild form of 
mathematical dyslexia which is really just more collateral damage from my not-so-cool-a-story concussion 
("i fell in the shower" is strikingly less romantic than 
"i was hit by a car when i was attempting to save an orphan and her three legged dog" 
but what can you do? life has no sense of the dramatic)

and now i sit here and wish my math and science teachers were curious
i know high school students are sometimes miserable 
and sometimes bored
but i think we would have felt less of both if we saw the beauty
and if we actually believed that you
teacher
cared as much as you did when you were small
but we saw your dim eyes and disappointment
so we played up to it
because we
too 
were tired

rose, the last supper, the stars, ancient greece, love and how we see it and find it in one another
if you told us that everything above this line is irrevocably tied with numbers

well
one number really

well then i think the monkeys in my head would have momentarily postponed their running amuck
hell
they may have even stopped throwing feces
which is
let's face it
an effective method of getting one's point across 
despite the obvious health hazard 

but teachers 
despite your obvious lack of passion and love 
and 
more importantly
endurance
i have reclaimed my love of numbers

because in the end
poetry
art
music
our hearts
can all be reduced to numbers
to phi
and equations
mostly phi
because that is the ratio of beauty and love and hope
because it's the artist's ratio
it's the bridge for us
for them



but 

still

you teachers

all of you

please do not give up

on those of us that have monkeys inside

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