dickie

Okay, so I'm grumpy at the moment.

I'd like it if, just once, a girl (preferably upon whom I'd had a secret crush) came up to me at random, grabbed my junk, said, "This is a Teichmüller geodesic ray," grabbed her junk and said, "and this is its uniquely ergodic direction."

Update (4/9/05): Today a really pretty homeless girl played me a song on her violin. She really needs to practice. Oh, and she had SHIT tattooed on the knuckles of her right hand, and the S was like a lightning bolt.

Update(4/11/05): So in May I'm going to be travelling all over the place: Michigan, back to Texas, Salt Lake (Park City really), then Chicago, then maybe back to Texas before off to the beach in North Carolina with the sisters (at the beginning of June, wanna come?). I also need to get my passport renewed (I'm getting old here) so I can go to Switzerland. More or less at least 50% of this minimum, modulo the beach, is going to be reimbursed. Sometimes being a mathematician is SWEET.

Update: Oh, the passport's still good for a couple years (not as old as I thought), although I do have a full beard in the picture, which might be problematic.

Happy Otter Update (4/13/05): Next year I don't have to teach, thanks to a fellowship from a certain William S. Livingston.

Sad Otter Update (4/13/05): The other night I ate too close to bedtime and had unsettling dreams. Waking up at four, having to stay up for an hour or so. Amidst >unruhigen Träumen< I found myself wandering a delightful dark city, and soon following a group from earlier in the day back to their home. One of the women led me by the hand and introduced me to her young daughter, who sat on a bench shortly afterward . . . polite, quiet, and patient. The woman and I stand (note the change in tense) in the middle of the room, my hands at her waist, our eyes locked, and we kiss. I'm certain that I must tell her that I love her deeply. She has a twinkle in her eye, as if she knows a secret, and she's smiling. She's says that she loves me. I start to explain how strange that is, how I was about to . . . and she still has that twinkle in her eye . . . the little girl is mine, and the woman my bride. Apparently I have some sort of amnesia, I've come home to her, and it's the perfect moment. She keeps leading me by the hand showing me things I don't remember ever having seen.

I wake up, of course, and none of this is real.

Last night, I slept like a stone, but right before I woke, my Father and I were taking a trip in his truck, and we had to turn back. We end up chatting in the kitchen late in the night, and I see all the detail in his face, the life behind his eyes, him as a little boy in the snow with his grandfather watching a building burn to the ground, and he falls off of his stool to the floor. I move in slow motion and he falls quickly. I can't make it to catch him. My will fails me until he is already lying there . . . I there screaming, pulling his head up begging him to open his eyes and laugh, to cry, to hold me up.

But my eyes open instead, and I lie in the bed, and all of it is real at its core. It is real in its essence. I have failed to keep him from going.