The fall colors are glorious: golden and red against a crystal-blue sky, and the temperatures are unusually warm for this time of year. The leaves whirl on the sidewalks and streets, and the pumpkins are still orange. Elsewhere on this little planet, people are suffering and dying in mass numbers, from natural disasters, wars, plagues, and poverty. The internet or the TV or the newspapers will always remind me of this. I recently read an excellent article on the Boston Globe website by James Parker, a review of English fantasy books, but one of its last paragraphs describes my mood perfectly. I'll quote the relevant excerpts from it here:

"Who can ignore the merry foreground, the delirium of distraction, that currently prevails in American life—in a country at war, under threat of terror, with an impending energy crisis and a scandalous political culture? One senses that unknown dangers are preparing to assert themselves, and the closer they get, the dreamier everyday life seems to feel. (Italics are mine.)"

Maybe it is a November thing. Those bright fall leaves are just the last flames before the freezing darkness that will envelop me for the next four months. North is winter, south is hurricanes. Am I living in a dream? Which world is real? Where will my place of refuge be? One of them is physics.

I am going through the chapter on sliding blocks and Newton's laws again. I will work on it until I understand it. Two steps forward, one step back. I am sometimes asked why I don't just skip this tedious high school stuff and go to more adventurous things: non-linear geometry! quantum mechanics! string theory! I don't know if I will ever get to study those things. I need to have a solid background in the "ordinary" physics before I work with any of the modern, more exotic physics. I wish that I were smarter, and faster, in math and physics, but at this point, this is what I can do.

I have another refuge from the world of sorrow, and I have had it for most of my life. The English fantasy authors that James Parker was writing about knew about this refuge. I am hardly in their literary league, but that does not stop me from doing what they do, in my small way. If you are interested, please visit my Pyracantha main page and you will find a new section there.

Posted at 2:51 am | link