Really, it’s only one step beyond sympathetic magic. Ingesting this mushroom shaped like an erect phallus will make my dick hard. This plant with red sap must be good for my circulation. If I eat low-fat foods, I will have less fat in my body. Fooling ourselves with simple ideas.
She keeps staring out the window. Nothing out there. Flat, empty, lightless. She wants more of it.
The bus left Fargo at 2:30 a.m. Not even a station there, just a parking area between a pair of one-story windowless buildings and an unmarked side door into which the driver disappeared for forty minutes. Coffee, cigarettes, NoDoz, cocaine? Now it’s 3:45. Crawling across the flattest and coldest state in the continental US. Outside it’s minus fifteen degrees. Due in Bismarck at 5:30 a.m. Eight others on the bus at the moment, spread up and down, all asleep except possibly the inert human in the penultimate row with headphones on, leaking 120 pulses of white noise each minute.
She turns her light back on, reopens Newman. In rubber-sheet geometry, curves are defined in such a way as to eliminate every naive appeal to intuition and experience.
Our theme for today: naiveté.
She keeps reading, trying to concentrate. She has always been able to lose herself in Newman, but not so much now. If she has lost her ability to focus, that would clinch the argument. What is she waiting for?
She glances out the window again. With the overhead light on all she sees is her unlovable face.
Where is she going?
(She’s going to Seattle.)
What is she doing?
(She’s sitting on a bus going to Seattle.)
What’s in Seattle?
(Seattle.)
She plows through four more pages and comes to this: A proof that 1 is equal to 2 is familiar to most of us. Such a proof may be extended to show that any two numbers or expressions are equal. The error common to all such frauds lies in dividing by zero, an operation strictly forbidden.
This reminds her of something. Years ago someone sent her one of those fallacious proofs. It must have been her father. Thinking of him, her eyes burn. If she finds the courage, of course her mother would be upset. But for some reason it hits her harder, thinking about her father. Who would he have to share snowball sentences with, goofy math puzzles, those weird things he writes? Who would he have at all?
Thursday, February 18, 2016
He’s talking with Beth Davis, a colleague in his department, in the hallway outside his office. She’s holding a sheaf of printouts in one hand and a Styrofoam cup in the other, describing to him some new data on supernova neutrinos. She pauses to take a sip of her coffee, ducking her head and pursing her lips, and suddenly a memory floats up from years ago, dim, barely recoverable, but it strengthens as he focuses on it. One night he and Beth had the most amazing sex. Images and sensations flood his mind. He can’t believe he hasn’t thought about this since then. They had sex all night. It was perfect sex. Where were they? At a conference? And when was it, and how is it possible that he’s never thought about it since then, and why did they do it only once?
He wakes.
Cancels his alarm, which is set to go off in thirty seconds. Lies in bed, pointing an erection at the ceiling. Did it really happen? It did! He still remembers it, how wonderful it was. Beth was— Beth is— He can’t believe he hasn’t—
He gets out of bed, puts on his bathrobe, and goes to piss, pushing his boner down. With the pressure from his bladder reduced he starts to detumesce. More awake now, he knows that of course it never happened. He often has dreams similar to this one, involving various women of his acquaintance. The memory of sex is always evanescent at first, then overpowering and euphoric. He’s known Beth slightly for two years. They haven’t even sat down to coffee together. She’s married. But now when he sees her he will feel an inappropriate attraction. His subjective impression is that the dream engenders the attraction, but he acknowledges it’s more likely that he’s unconsciously attracted to unavailable women and therefore dreams about them.
He goes down to the kitchen to start coffee, comes back up, shaves, clothes himself, redescends. Boils three eggs, two for breakfast, one for lunch. When the eggs are done, he puts the pot lid facedown on the counter and drains the water. He turns back from the sink to see the lid creeping stepwise across the Formica. The steam trapped under the hot lid is condensing against the cool surface, forming a vacuum and a water seal around the rim. When the vacuum gets strong enough to break the seal at its weakest point, the air flowing in under the rim pulls it, hydroplaning, in the contrary direction. The pressure equalizes and the lid stops moving until more condensation causes the phenomenon to recur. It’s a steam engine powered by condensation rather than vaporization. This is the sort of thing that makes scientifically illiterate people believe in poltergeists.
He eats standing at the counter, forcing himself to listen to a few minutes of NPR news. Stupidity appears to be on a relentless rise. This sociopathic moron Trump just won the New Hampshire primary. Of course there’s little chance he’ll survive the primaries, but the other Republicans aren’t much better. Such a lineup of ignoramuses and poltroons, it’s scarcely to be believed.
He washes his plate and cup, puts his papers and laptop in his shoulder bag, shrugs on his coat. 7:20 a.m. Sun just coming up. Lecture at nine.
People forget to turn off a light, then remember
