I'm back in the studio after a couple of weeks of not painting or drawing, due to sickness and travel. My next show is at a small fantasy convention, the same one I've been at for the last twenty-seven years or so. It is one of the few remaining conventions I attend. My earlier days were full of these meetings, which marked the cycle of my year. I can only make tiny pictures for this show now since no one there has any money to spend. They are old hippies and Pagans and have never had any more than a few dollars for books, trinkets, and bits of fantasy art. Now they are really getting old, greyer and less healthy, but not any richer.

I do get to see a couple of my Friendly Mathematicians at this show, though, which is one of the reasons I go to it. I am there mostly for socializing anyway. I will bring my books and problems. It is easier for me now than it was back in my freelance days, because I have the day job now and a steady source of income, so I don't have to worry about selling anything at the convention.

I am also back doing my physics. I have almost returned to the place I was at before I got sick and before I went to Massachusetts. Once I return there, I will move ahead into material I have studied before but only very simply. The cycle for me is simple introduction, then more complex re-working of the same material, and then more complexity with extra examples not found in the earlier, less complete lessons. This is why it takes me three times round to learn anything in physics. It is interesting, if dismaying, to see what the simpler books (such as Barron's "made easy" book) leave out.

This way of learning things, by circling round and round again in cycle and epicycle, seems quite inefficient, but I don't know any other way. It takes me at least those three times before I remember something for good. And even then, I forget a lot of it until I review it again. One learning problem I have not solved is how much I need to know perfectly by memory so that I will always have it at hand, and how much I can half-remember and look up again. There is nobody to tell me whether I have made any progress, only the amount of book that I have gone through, and the amount that remains.

Posted at 2:52 am | link