Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Geometry of self

I remember my geometry teacher in primary school. He was special to me because unlike my normal classroom teacher we didn't see him all the time.

His eyes seemed to bulge out from his face, I realise now it is because his brain was so full. Despite having bulging eyeballs there was a deeper calm that radiated in his quiet attitude and smile. When the whole assembly had their eyes closed during grace I used to watch how his eyelids would remain half open with his eyeballs rolled back. The whites would scare me and I would think he must be very deeply involved in the prayer to not notice how uncomfortable his eyes must have been.

He taught us that to draw a circle with a compass you need to start by drawing a tiny dot on the page. Then you spike the dot and twirl the compass using mostly your fingers, not your whole wrist. Every circle starts with a point.

I feel like I am a circle and also a point, the point is the part which came first, which makes the rest possible, which has no direction or magnitude or dimension and the circle is the chemical elements, the atoms and molecules, the systems and combinations, the body, the television, the family, the architecture, the history, the pet dog, the feeling of hunger, the role of the sister, the role of the mother, the chewed fingernails. All things seen and learnt, all skills gained, all ideas acquired, all feelings felt, all actions carried through... The circle doesn't have fixed ambit because it seems to grow relative to circumstance. I think maybe it's nicer to consider it as a sphere (just to make things a little more wholesome).

And one day the circlesphere will be erased, and I'll be a point somewhere in space with no magnitude, no meaning, unattached. At the heart of our circles we're all points, and points are omnipresent.

No comments:

Post a Comment