A moment of Serenity

Arvo Pärt / Magnificat - Robert Shaw, Robert Shaw Festival Singers

Grimformation

When you read a horrible story, or see it on the news, you think... "What a shame." Then you sort of file it for future discussion, or reference. It's very different when it happens to someone you know. 

One of the professors at my school has had the most horrible thing I could ever possibly imagine, happen to him. It's been all over the newspapers, the television news was interviewing him, and it seemed very difficult for me to put those film clips together with the humorous, lively gentleman that I see all the time. Everyone that works in the department, looks so sad. He was the biological sciences chair. He has subbed in classes that I have taken, and helped me when I had questions or problems. He is a very nice guy, and highly respected on campus. 

It's been bothering me ever since, and I am pretty sure he called a radio show today and asked for advice. 

His wife, killed his 17 month old child. He has another child, three, and his stepson, who is fifteen. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to go through losing a child, and not only that, but basically seeing his family dissolve before his eyes. How do the other children put their mind around that as they grow towards adulthood? 

Having the spouse you loved and trusted, kill your child. He came home from class that night, and his entire life was shattered into tiny bits. During the TV interview, they asked if he has seen his wife, since she had been taken away. He just very calmly said, "I am sure there will be opportunities to see her in the future." 

This whole event has been haunting me since it happened. I cannot walk past his office without looking to see if there are new notices on the door.  I wanted to drop a sympathy card in the envelope that the other professors put there, but I am thinking that just is not going to come close to helping this situation. What can you say or do that would help? All I can do is send good thoughts, or pray... but it's not going to change anything, or help him. 

He has taken an indefinite leave of absence. I hope he will survive all of this. 

This note is dedicated with the utmost devotion to Tim, who is kind and thoughtful, and always reminds me to strive to work harder at math.

So, last week I am reading Keat's Ode on a Grecian Urn.This is because I am turning 50-2 next week, and I was thinking about the lines: 

“When old age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

So, I just finished a paper on Plato's The Republic, that basically outlines that same subject matter, in a slightly different fashion. He maintains in his analogy of the sun (Book 6, 508-509), that the sun is the light of truth, and that darkness is confusion. Earlier in the text, he states that truth cannot be “akin to what is disproportionate” (486 b10). Given this, Plato and Keats seem to be of the same mind. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote: 

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. 

Now, follow my thinking here... if beauty is truth, and truth is actually beauty as stated... Is math beautiful and truthful? 

If it is, it's a shame I am so bad at math. Because if this holds true... I will never experience true beauty or truth.