Befriend your local number theorist and she will tell you —
when you corner her at the grocery store, between the limes and the off-brand Prilosec
This is not because she is like you —
who collects rocks in boxes when they are shaped like nothing in particular,
because if you only picked up the smooth, the banded, the cordiform
you might hurt the rest of their unfeelings —
But because —
if you think about it —
The first number that would be considered uninteresting —
Not a Fibonacci, not a perfect totient,
not the sum of two cubes expressed two different ways —
would become interesting,
by virtue of being the first uninteresting one.
You, though —
You could show up first to every party;
You could arrive to work at 4 AM.
You could sit down for Christmas dinner on Halloween and still
No one will want to hear about your box of rocks —
Nor Srinivasa Ramanujan, nor Fresnel and his catadioptric lens,
Nor that electroswing song that your head has on loop,
Nor the way you feel, sometimes, alien, to this planet that —
At least to your knowledge —
Has always been your own.
Click here to read Ali MacLeod on the origin of the poem.
Image by Ir Solyanaya on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Proof by Contradiction - December 10, 2024