yard sale math book

Saturday, June 22, 2013

There were yard sales all around the neighborhood and across town. Looked like houses threw up all over their lawns. They had too much to eat, they stood in the sun too long, they're hung-over -- whatever, and they up-chucked.

The yards look anxious, waiting for someone to come and make them well.

The sales are all rumpled clothes that the owner keeps folding as the day fades into the sun, makeshift tables of boards set up on chairs and sawhorses, old TVs, futons, lamps, lampshades, a cooking pot without a lid and a lid without a cooking pot. Desperation spelled out in old shoes, faded plastic toys, assorted fragments of dinnerware sets, and jewelry someone's aunt used to wear. Books. Here in this town the books are mostly about Jesus.

But I'd stopped and so, looked for something.

Found this mathbook. Price written on the cover in ink said one dollar, but this was the third day of the sale, so the books were ten cents each. I paid the dime for the dollar book; already the math wasn't working right.

This book promises me fractals and polygons. I love math. I'm no good at it, except when I'm measuring ingredients, counting change, or figuring aspects. But I know it's a pure language and what it says is what it means. Until you get to algebra which is the poetry of math, in which X stands for Y.

I've dreamed math before. Woke up saying, a'hah! and then lost what I knew before morning came proper. Numbers mean other things to me besides their value in equations. Always did. Before I knew there was a thing called numerology. I liked some numbers, didn't like others. I didn't like six. Six made me think of staying home when the circus was in town. It made me antsy.  I loved nine, even liked that it could also mean no. Eight was hard work. Seven was mystical. Two was difficult.Three was just about perfect.

Now I can add initiative and hard work and get to a number with plenty to share, where things that have been known have only to be recalled, not relearned, though the basics of how I got here are a bit hazy.Why is 72 degrees important? I sense the answer.

My new book tells me it is important to have precise meaning for small words such as and, if, then,and or, and to understand the meanings of symbols such as <, =, and >.   If that isn't poetry, I'd like to know what is.

The price of the book, when new, was $12.97. The book hasn't aged any. It's pristine, barely used, and the only thing that sets it apart from others still in the store is that someone wrote $1.00 in marker on the top front corner of the cover of the book for which I paid a dime.

Math is absolute. But values are still subject to our perceptions.