There is a song by Frank Black that I like, even though the lyrics don't really make that much sense. Maybe it was just the phrase "
places named after numbers, different kind of love", which caught my attention. It puzzled me, but somehow sounded true...
Far from being a maths genius, I did have a fascination with numbers as a child. I had an imaginary football club where each player was represented by a marble, with his own stats for stamina, skill and fitness. And yet later, I would employ that system to rate the girls in my class by character, looks and overall score. It was an attempt to hold on to a childhood dreamworld in the face of hard hitting puberty. As a child counting was my drive for many things - walking in the mountains ("let's reach 3000 meters altitude!!"), running the 50 meters as fast as possible, imagining the size of population of my imaginary planet (yes! I did have an imaginary planet! Ha!) and, of course - the stairs: When I was six or so, I had an obsession with counting steps on stairs during walks with my father. I remember reaching the number 10,000 after a week of counting and it made me increadibly proud. I loved counting. And felt like the count, until there was some maths wizz-kid in our primary school class who really was the count for all of us - he would always win at maths games against the whole rest of the class and later even participate in the German school maths olympics. But also him was just a puny shadow compared this man:
Yesterday, I came across a documentary about
Daniel Tammet, a prodigious savant who was diagnosed with epilepsy as a child and Asperger's syndrome later. Recently, he learned German within a week - as he did with Icelandic a few years ago. He can remember the number
Pi up to the 25,000th digit and he can do the most difficult and intricate calculations in his head.
The special thing about him, however, is that he is able to communicate much of his inner life to the outside world, unlike other prodigious Asperger's. I'm deeply impressed by how he describes his inner life, his days are literally numbered. Calculations become imaginary landscapes and when he talks about it, it is quite poetic.
I have my own memory of what it is or was like to have a private imaginary world. But while my fascination with numbers, like that of many kids, was actually counting, Daniel Tammet seems to be doing something else - he reads them and wields the results like a poet would do with a phrase. In his world, language, numbers and emotion are intertwined. Numbers are actually living things, beautiful, intriguing or scary. For him numbers are an integral, necessary part of everything. Like in that Frank Black song -
Beyond below above
A gravity that slumbers
At the center of
Places named after numbers
A different kind of love
Thank you for the picture,
Heidi Rettig.
There is a song by Frank Black that I like, even though the lyrics don't really make that much sense. Maybe it was just the phrase "places named after numbers, different kind of love", which caught my attention. It puzzled me, but somehow sounded true...
This morning I woke up to a burning candy shop on the radio. It is also the day when I'll be heading into a four day luscious holiday with a very special woman. And so I say:
Gut, ok. Ihr seid keine Massenkonsumenten, sondern besondere Menschen. Ja, und genau darum geht's hier. Denn nun gibt's eine tolle Gelegenheit für Online-Einkäufer nebenbei Gutes zu tun. Und ganz nebenbei auch noch unsere unterfinanzierte aber total wichtige, tolle, gute, sinnvolle Arbeit in einem innovativen gemeinnützigen Verein zu unterstützen. Indem Ihr Euch nämlich ganz einfach den tollen auf's philippinenbüro zugeschnittenen Toolbar von clicks4charity.de runterladet:
Yul is a modification of the old nordic word „Yula“, meaning „wheel“ and referring to the ever constant cycle of the seasons. „Yul“ is a pagan celebration of winter solstice. Solstitium in turn is Latin, meaning „resting of the sun“. During Yul, the longest night of the year, the promise of rebirth and the return of the light are celebrated and realised and many candles are lit. While it originally refers to the night of the 21st December, it has been postponed this year by two weeks, for purely personal reasons.
Manchmal wünsche ich mir, ich könnte mich in eine Katze verwandeln. Nach Hause kommen und mich schnurrend auf das Sofa legen, den Körper einrollen und den Kopf auf die gefalteten Pfoten legen. Das dicke Fell schützt gegen Welt und Winter, die Nonchalance der getigerten Seele düpiert die Sehnsucht. Die Sehnsucht nach Schneeballschlachten zum Beispiel und der dumpfen Stille im Neuschnee, nach glasklaren Nächten übersäht von Sternen und schneeflockigen Ingrid Bergmann Küssen und einem warmen Körper und Gegenstück zu diesem Loch im Herzen. Die Sehnsucht danach, nach Hause zu kommen, sich auf’s Sofa zu legen, den Körper einzurollen und nicht an Dinge zu denken, die es so garnicht gibt im Zeitalter des Klimawandels und der Desillusion. Der Klimawandel macht meine Winterwelt letztlich nass und grau und die Desillusion lacht sich ins Fäustchen und verdeutlicht, dass dies strenggenommen garnicht meine Welt ist: Denn irgendetwas, was vielleicht auch irgendwann einmal aus Liebe geschehen ist kommt vermutlich genausogut aus anderen Gründen zustande.
