Roger Stone

The Fool: If on one's way one does not come across one's better or an equal, then one should press on resolutely alone. There is no companionship with a fool."
Dhammapada 5.61

"Infinity is not a number, but how many numbers there are."


Banach-Tarski Paradox

My Zone of Cognitive Function (Aging)

1

Cognitive functioning is influenced by our genetic background and age.

I know a little about my genetic background.

For instance, I know that my grandfather's build and looks differed quite dramatically from my father's. My mother also looked quite different than her parents.

Everyone died.

I took 2 DNA tests. I am haplogroup H maternally. I am most likely of European descent, but began with an unknown 50% and have watched origin percentages flutter all around Asia, the Middle East, the Meditteranean, the north of Europe.

I am 62. Is 62 the new 52, or is it now 42, or is it simply, and always, 62?

My mother, as she lay dying, said she was surprised at how mismatched her inner self was to her outer self. It's as if, she said, the inside me forgot to grow old.

2

Our lifestyle determines whether we function in the upper or lower portion of our zone.

I practice prayers, languages, drawing. When I read, I seek mirrors and lakes to reflect words and images.  My memory was a pool that has turned into a sea.

The time-shortened horizon I see, yet it still seems leagues away from me.

3

Plaques and tangles are present, but the cognitively engaged don't show signs of Alzheimer's.

What is my reserve task capacity, my big-brained engagement, my tolerance level of age infiltration?

I am in love with life, from seed to stone.  Have studies shown love thickens cortexes, lessens plaque, untangles?

I will try to stay alive, he said, but cannot guarantee I'll be here the next time you visit me.

A bank is being built across the street. The noise is so constant that when it stops I am surprised. Is it lunchtime? No. It is 2:30 in the afternoon.  I don't know what caused this silence but I am grateful for it. I can hear the keyboard I am typing on, the hum of the house, an occasional bird. All this has been drowned for hours each day for months.

Srinivasa Ramanujan

namajiri
you're he
you're me
you're we.

dream equations

In a dream,
I stand
on a deck
at night.
Testaments to
nested equations
leap out of the water,
keep me
looking
forever left,
and right.


In another dream,
the number
139
whistles down a taxi,
reminds
me
as it climbs in
numbers
have souls.



In a third dream
equal signs
= = = = = =
bridge to an ait
where
there are
large numbers on slate
or
maths drawn in sand.





https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/sri-ramanujan-and-the-secrets-of-lakshmi/

the bed you lie in

Old Age: Those who have not lived the holy life, who have not acquired wealth in their youth, lie like spent arrows, grieving for times past.
Dhammapada 11.156


White people should educate themselves
privileged as they are.
Problem is, they've burned the books
that would have helped them,
or else
so terrorized librarians
that they have hidden them.
First-person narratives?
Why should I take the time,
said she,
to over and again
educate you on me?
See
white people have made the bed
they now lie in.
It is not a princess and the pea
sea of mattresses either.
This bed's old and narrow,
hard on the bone,
with a mattress like stone.

"Dig up the root of craving, as one does a weed for its fragrant root. Don't let Mara destroy you again and again, as a stream does its reeds."
Dhammapada  24. 337



Moon in Aquarius, waning gibbous


Last night,
under
the moon,
my
garden
reflected
brittle
winter ice.
Today,
warmed,
spilled,
chilled again
it's a crust,
just a crust,
as the noon sun
draws out its damp again.

working -

For me, the idea of mahjong solitaire is
as both symbol and strange disassociation.
(I play only online and have never played table mahjong)

I started playing when my husband died to ease grief and panic.
Why do I continue?

Pictures, strokes, and symbols,
matched across space
on the internet "plain",
help me "see" my grief and panic
as linked to a "landscape" of life,
not lacking it.

I suppose another system may have been chosen,

but the life forces in mahjong patterns and sets speaks to me as an artist.

It struck me how deeply images and words reside within our minds,
which in turn has led me to order

Wittgenstein's blue and brown notebooks.

"Never have anything to do with likes and dislikes. The absence of what one likes is painful, as is the presence of what one dislikes."
- Dhammapada 16.210



It's not just you
who worries about
the gypsies
sitting with young children at bus stops
on their way to Saturday markets and
playgrounds -
their children bound to hear
slurs, see their father bumped as
a drunk does a wall -
no personhood at all in that shove.

It's not just me who worries about
the Americans
lacking love of languages
unstung by poetry
lost to beauty
shunning speech
preaching an English
I don't know and don't want

It's not just you
who worries about
transgender folk
ending beaten not by
hate but
broken by cliques
sticking not with but
away from them

Reminder - they are us,
just differently so.
If they go, so do we.
Exclusion is a small room
that only gets smaller
over time.

book making

On my desk lay eight books

is The first two each have a daisy tooled into, perhaps, soft deerskin, contain 5 foxed pages of paper, unused. Beside them this thin digest, full of mountain air, 48 pages from the fibers of the daphne,
from a women's cooperative in Nepal.

Three books,
all, leather,
paper plants and
tree, we,
girls, women,
are paired with
larger books,
histories.
Do these
comprise
lives, begin
to write us in
as
truth or fiction?

Or take
the making of
three more,
thread-bound, 
blue.
These books
began
as
land,
as notes,
written
down
near a desert sea.
Yet they came to be
colored, again and again,
because the mind said
you must make
blue lakes
of them.