What happened to that good intention? The one that went like this: sift through all my old notebooks and post stuff so that my poems and writings won’t go unread…
It’s the end of January and this is my first post on Substack this year. Note to self – put your money where your mouth is!
This is an odd little poem and takes me back to my sixth form days. I wasn’t even 18 when I wrote this, and it feels a bit cringey to read it now – I must have been a pretentious wannabe poet in my duffle coat and glasses. I gave up Maths as soon as I could when I was at school – just about managed the essential ‘O’ Level (at the time) that would open doors to the places I wanted to go. But I had friends who did take mathematical studies further and I was partly in awe of them because their brains worked so differently from mine and partly sorry for them because they had to wrestle with such seemingly complex things. I was good at learning languages, but I wasn’t keen on sums and the language of Maths – little did I know!
I remember the conversation I had with a friend who was ‘doing Maths’ and this poem was the result. We talked about what we saw as a huge question: why did everything have to be proved? Why did we need scientific or mathematical evidence for everything? We were busy discovering what an amazing world were living in, why couldn’t we use our senses to see, feel, hear, touch and taste things and make the best sense of it that we could?
Half a century later, I still feel much the same. The friend went on to be an astro-physicist and we eventually lost touch.
Equations – 1975
Wading through the mire of a maths lesson, he
put down his pen and considered.
"The world needs no calculations, it can revolve by
itself without my wrestling with paper and
mumbling equations - open the window and let me fly - drift on a warm air current
that holds no logarithms, climb to the top of a tree that does not chant
times tables, swim in a river that does not swirl
with geometry - the mathematical significances of the universe are better left
right here – let me learn about patterns
without looking up the answers."
I was just out on my dog walk Sue and I found myself thinking about this 'poem from 1975'. Suddenly I saw that 17 year old wannabe poet in her duffle coat and glasses for who she is ... the Fool about to bravely step off the cliff into the beckoning, dazzling world of potential she sees ahead. And I'm so pleased she did!