The sea

I look at them. These 8500 physicists who gather in Baltimore, to hawk old ideas and spark new trains of thought. It's a frenetic bazaar, a flurry of feet from one projection room to another. Usually, a new face, but sometimes the pleasure of an old acquaintance. I appreciate the intellectual democracy. With few exceptions, everybody has the spotlight for ten minutes, afterwhich one is firmly nudged out. Good idea? Bad idea? It doesn't matter. You have six hundred seconds to capture the imagination of jaded scientists, to seduce them from facebook-induced catatonia. A good idea cannot stand on its own, it takes clarity and charisma to make it viral.


Nietzsche: A very popular error, having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is having the courage for an attack on one's convictions! ... there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little question mark that you place after your special words and favorite doctrines than all the solemn gestures and trumps before accusers and law courts.

I look at them. Faces eager to make an impression, to find that special partner who appreciates the backalleys and subtleties in an original thought. And I am one of those faces. We are a sea of isolated currents, sometimes mingling to form great whirlpools, othertimes rejecting and dissipating into silence. How humbling, to be a wisp of a current, to be swallowed in this sea.


I let my life play in fastfoward. The evergreen cast are these faces, and each year they will return, to play variations of the same role. Their lines will be slightly different, and their characters may grow in stature, or diminish. Yet the essence is the same, the deep longing. How repulsive, the sameness. Yet this same sameness, it must eventually save us from loneliness.

Sardines

Much later, I was informed that the yoghurt machine had to be sent for repairs. These are the players.

He tells me his goal is to lead a sincere life. This I interpret as a deep-going consistency between his avowed values and his actual life, a rejection of all superfluous activities that do not align with his happiness. The humility with which he approaches quantum field theory, his eagerness for deep friendship, and his affinity toward Russian rock. He delivers analogies few people want to understand, thus inviting ridicule, to his detriment. The price of originality, he laments.

She has become a lounge fixture on Mondays, rarely leaving Mit’s side; she nurtures him with kind words, consoles him in times of frustration, and her eyes are wide. I watch their interplay with admiration, and envy. She was the mythical figure I never thought I’d meet. When I finally found her, I invited her to vegan dinner in Butler/Wilson dining hall. Not knowing anything about each other, we already had a lot in common. She tells Mit she found me to be exceptionally polite during dinner. Mit’s theory is that I am merely mirroring her personality.

There is Mit himself, who has become obsessed with projective geometry while trying to understand a card game.

Finally there is Matt, whom I know precious little.

The five of us were playing sardines in the dining hall and kitchen of Old Graduate College. We stole in through a door left negligently unlocked; I have a habit of turning any knob I encounter. Night time in the dining hall: a vast, dark emptiness, unbroken silence, the thrill of trespassing into the sacred, a bottle of rum in my bag, what a heady concoction stirring in our blood. If we dare to look, dead schoolmasters frown at us from bygone portraits along the walls.

Polite was streaming up and down the hallway, personifying excitement. To her fell the role of first hider. Under a ramshackle pile of chairs she hid, still as petrified wood, cloaked in shadows. Mit found her after almost an hour. I know this because he disappeared, and then us three had to look for those two. An hour of blindly groping in shadowed crevices with heart in mouth, not knowing what lies at their end. The delicious suspense. A frightened mice, mayhaps. A five-year old bread crumb. Warm, moist human skin? I dread that initial contact, that stark moment of truth: Ah! I am not alone in this dark universe.

I found them next; to my disappointment, they were not making out.

Sincere was next to hide. I was convinced I knew all the spots. Didn’t I just suffer through an hour of hunting down Polite? Human-size ovens and refrigerators. Secret storerooms. I would have risked suffocation and hidden in a laundry bag of used tablecloths. One by one, my hiding spots were uncovered and proven fruitless. My bravado converted to incredulity. I began to doubt myself, retraced my steps, repeated the cycle, ad infinitum. Because there was always that tiny dark corner that I never dared probe, that corner in my mind where fear is my ruler. Echoes of the eternal recurrence, with growing despair. Can I give up now?

Mit and Matt agreed. It was too much. I couldn’t find Polite to end the game prematurely. Cheekily, she had vanished. We all knew what that meant. I steeled my heart and plowed on. More than an hour passed before I found the two of them, behind the self-service yoghurt machine, where the wall curved to form a narrow hollow. In retrospect, it seems blindingly obvious, but I have never been a yoghurt person. Sincere comfortably fit into the hollow, if one folds him up neatly. Polite is a small girl, and the two of them shared a strained relationship. In protest, the yoghurt machine screeched alarmingly against the floor as I climbed into the hollow. The third sardine nearly burst the can. I crouched over them in enforced intimacy. We were a tangle of arms and legs, breaths and whispers. Polite was pinned into a corner, and my knee rested on her inner thigh. She attempted to adjust her skirt, but gave up. Our faces inches away, I asked if she was ok. She said yes, but we knew better. My cramped legs began to hurt. Sincere rested his cheek on my back, to comfort me, or himself.

Matt, Mit, will you please?