Live on the side of life
You can trace the lineage of mathematics. There’s a database — the Mathematics Genealogy Project — which documents doctoral advisors and their students. The oldest chronological entry is Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi, who died in 1010 AD. His student Avicenna has more than 220,000 descendants.
Long timelines like these remind me of migration cycles. Birds, whales, butterflies. Nobody migrates like the North American monarchs: tiny things weighing less than paperclips flying up to three thousand miles, from Canada to Mexico, returning to the same exact trees. The journey can take upwards of eight months. But adult butterflies only live for 2-6 weeks. It is the children's grandchildren which return south the following fall.
Which reminds me of the promise that God makes to Abraham: that his descendants will inherit “a land overflowing with milk and honey”. Not him, but his descendants. It’s a promise which is made not only to Abraham but also to Abraham’s son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob: you won’t see it, but your children will.
One of those children is Moses. His wife, a woman named Zipporah, is barely mentioned. A footnote. But centuries later, a young man in Italy learns the story and includes her in one of his paintings. That man’s name is Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, but he goes by Sandro Botticelli. Over time his painting degrades. But centuries later, a young man in France glimpses a chipped, faded copy and is struck by the woman’s beauty. That man’s name is Marcel Proust, and in his first novel, he writes a scene where a girl opens the door for a boy. That girl — Odette — is slightly sick, her posture is bad, her skin blotchy, her hair unbrushed, and the boy — Swann — who has never given her a moment’s thought before, falls in love with her then and there because she looks like the girl from the damaged painting.
It can be tempting to daydream of romance1. Moses and Zipporah, Odette and Swann. It can be tempting to fantasize of a romantic love so grounding that, in its presence, every other problem recedes into the background. But when we zoom out it is clear that the primary romance in life is not the relationship between two people but rather the spectacular, swooning, tenuous, unbreakable bond between the forgotten past and the remembered future. When we zoom out it is clear that everything that was ever created was created to fight the alienation of death. Not just art. Not just butterflies or math. Children carve their initials on the wall. People carve prefrontal cortexes into each other. People can do that. Yes.
You have dinner with someone, and a few hours later his left hand is on your chest. Not even your breast, your clothed chest. He says a few sentences and your life is changed forever. It would sound ridiculous if it didn’t happen. But it did happen, and it does.
And if you can hope in a future while conversing with the past, then you are now able — and not only able but morally required — and not only morally required but desperately wanting — and not only desperately wanting but absolutely needing — and not only absolutely needing but expressly needed — to push and move and fight for the world you want to see. And furthermore to win.
And now we see how, when done right, our relationships do not only draw us inwards into private understanding but also outwards into public motion2. To push, to move, to fight — is to change. Change is very difficult. It is much easier simply to contemplate change. Or to ask someone else to change. Or to read blog posts about butterflies and Renaissance paintings. I know, I know, beautiful.
Beauty makes us feel. But we do not choose our feelings. We only choose our actions3. It is not enough merely to feel. Neither is it enough to act in the exact opposite manner of the things you don’t like4. You actually have to embody exactly what you want to see in the world. Life transforms you and then you transform it. Not by dying. By living more.
i don’t want to be cruel here. it is understandable that lonely people would fantasize about being understood. and in American culture the experience of communicating one’s interiority is depicted primarily through romance. and everyone in the world is American
mmm — this is the point i was trying to make 2 essays ago. don’t go read that essay, it fucking sucks. and even this one … i will be rewriting this. multiple times. i can tell. alright. that’s fun too.
unfortunately the boilerplate success story for “demure/mindful woman” is not about action. it is not about successfully asking lots of men on dates and then wooing one of them and then proposing to him. the boilerplate success story for woman is about passivity, being chosen, being selected and then fucked. hmmmm. obviously it feels good to be liked. but in order to love, woman must exit this little room of perpetual adolescence and LEARN TO ACT.
antifa