alywats

[alywats]

raft

it’s a double not a queen so we have to stay close on our raft, floating downstream past this year or that we paddle into uncertain waters pinning ourselves down to our warm home we call raft

rectangular with box-springs a little dent in the middle where our hips have sailed a million voyages our raft never allowing us to fall in

we do not flinch when changes to the four bedroom walls known as river banks fly past us as the current picks up we know in the end, there will be us your arm strewn over my torso like a life vest, upon this raft we call home

#poem #poetry #I'm back? maybe

[alywats]

Math Escapril (Math Poetry Month) #11-15

11. An Odd Number Of…

parity is so definite, so final so claustrophobic there’s just nowhere to breathe in this formal statement of oddness

to be, odd, or not to be, odd there is no leeway, no slack the integers must feel very pinned down, they must

drive their wives crazy buying sports cars to feel something

12. I Think We’re Lost

to be lost at sea the sea being graduate school graduate school being men who are self prophetic captains of the war boat

sorry, what I mean to say is that math academia feels a lot like a naval ship rigid and overwhelming and full of men with some

kind of complex the complex not being complex numbers it’s all very confusing we are all very lost

13. Palmful

take just a little not more than a palmful don’t worry if you don’t feel it right away knowledge can be intoxicating the rush of sharp clarity one feels it’s a high to be chased but we must be careful we must practice harm reduction

14. Taxidermy

preserving something dead how unnerving and pretty to be the same after the transformation except not really

some of the life of a vector is lost when we change spaces but we pretend not to see it how unnerving and pretty, we say

15. Something Very Gentle

it is a sweetness the gentle way a curve lies tangent to some line kissing only once departing after only one shared moment

#math poetry month #math escapril #escapril #math poetry #poem

[alywats]

Math Escapril (Math Poetry Month): (#6-10)

6. Time (Nonlinear)

sometimes I wish I were a Vonnegut character, detached from that linear arrow of time

what’s the fourth dimension all about anyways? I just want to know that all moments

past, present, and future have always existed, always will exist, let me say this and believe

7. Body Swap

swap a cube’s vertices with her faces and you’ll have her octahedral lover they fit perfectly together

no other platonic solid could ever pour her coffee that way

8. ____ As Medicine

reading mathematics is a medicine take enough and you will feel better life won’t feel quite as pointless just don’t take too much don’t overdose that’s how Gödel died

9. We’re Not Alone

mathematics is a lonely field it ought not to be, yet the men who lock themselves in rooms, insist upon it I know this to be an

act of ego, want for legacy a contrived scarcity keeping Andrew’s wiles alone, working in secret so as not to share glory

10. Magnification

let us zoom in on Sierpinki’s triangle we will see no change perspective is so arbitrary to such infinite beings as fractals

#math poetry month #math poem #escapril #math escapril #poem

[alywats]

Math Poetry Month: Math Escapril (1-5)

1. When I Opened My Eyes

I didn’t trust induction for a time

seeing is believing

in higher dimensions the cubes look

funny but once I opened my eyes

(not the the eyes in my sockets,

my metaphoric inner visualization of what it means

to take a leap)

I did

2. A Separation

in topology and related

branches of mathematics, separated

sets are pairs of subsets of a

given topological space that

are related to each other

in a certain way: roughly

speaking, neither overlapping

nor touching

let us never love disjoint like that baby I mean

keep the song between us

please don’t fall victim to topology

3. Limbs

tree limb

union of some branches

graph theorists love getting

nasty in the forest

4. Strange Behavior

the Banach-Tarski paradox

says take one body and become two

it is a paradox

but as a woman I understand

what it means to create another from

my own flesh and my own bone

to write it off as a fluke

never quite shaking eerie feeling

5. Crush

did you know that odd

numbers have crushes on the evens

they touch yet there’s so much

infinity between them it would be

unreasonable

to assume there

would be no crushing

#math poetry month #escapril #math escapril #poetry #math poetry #math poem

[alywats]

It's Math Poetry Month 2: Electric Boogaloo

Well hi there again, I know it's been a couple months since we spoke. Winter as a grad student is... a lot. But, I'm back to writing for the month of April, because it's once again Math Poetry Month! In case you missed it last year, April is both International Poetry Month AND National Mathematics and Statistics Awareness month. As a mathematician and a poet, it is simply my duty to make April a month of math poetry mashups large and small. Check out what we did last year! It’s all under the tag #math poetry month !

This month I will be attempting to write 30 poems in 30 days, with math being the overall theme of the collection. To make life a little easier for myself, I’ll be following the 2022 Escapril poetry prompts given by Savannah Brown (these prompts are always so fun every year, I did the 2019 Escapril prompts and I have wanted to try my hand at Savannah's prompts every April since! I finally have some inspiration to tackle 30 poems in 30 days again, I can't wait to get started):

Feel free to join me on this little journey! I will also be highlighting some math poets other than myself, old and new, to celebrate this niche but thriving craft. Happy Math Poetry Month besties!

#math poetry month #escapril #math #poetry

[alywats]

mascara tears: a luxury

when I was fifteen, all my eyelashes fell out alopecia can get worse with emotional stress, and what is more emotionally stressful than being fifteen and a girl being fifteen and a girl and using Instagram or, maybe I cried enough acid tears to burn all the eyelashes off maybe fifteen is just the time for regrowth

and when they did start to regrow, the itch, the waterline stubble, the poke, drawing saltwater, underneath made my eyes look even more pink, more bloodshot than crying over boys ever did and my eyeliner didn’t sit right I forgot what mascara the magazines told me I was supposed to buy, anyway

some of the new stubby eyelashes were blonde and some of them were coarse, some dark brown, some melancholy my wings never graced me evenly, no I had sparse lashes on top but none on the bottom, or thick on one eye gaps on the other

once, on a whim, I bought a tube of drugstore black opened wide and blindly stabbed, I decided, that day I would be a real eyelash girl finally, I let the ink flow melodrama like it was prom night and it was raining they say if you find a fallen eyelash you should blow it away and make a wish but oh, my body taught me better than that

#a poem about being a teen girl #more alopecia content #sure why not #alopecia #poem #poet #poetry #alopecia awareness month

[alywats]

August 2021 Reading Wrap-up

Oh is it time for some more book reviews? August flew by, really got sipped away like a bottle of wine, as some may say. I read six books during the month, totalling 2867 pages! And clearly I’m already in the mood for October because half of my reads this month were horror. Happy end of summer, I will be attempting to fit in a few more long reads before I get too caught up in school.

1. People We Meet On Vacation -Emily Henry (384 pgs) 4

My first read of the month was a buddy read with my friend Carly! I really love reading with her because it makes me articulate my thoughts more frequently through the reading process. I had read Beach Read by Emily Henry last year, and I was excited to read another one of her works! This did not disappoint; it was super cute, had a good dose of humor, and it made me feel all mushy gushy. Huge fan of a rom-com book.

2. Everything’s Eventual -Stephen King (605 pgs) 3.5

A collection of short stories by Stephen King, very mediocre, but also not bad. I particularly liked the story The Man In The Black Suit, but then again I always love a good Southern Gothic “The Devil Is Among Us” vibe. I am slowly but surely making my way through Stephen King’s entire body of work, but the man has A Lot of books.

3. Take A Hint, Dani Brown -Talia Hibbert (400 pgs) 3

I read the first book in this series in January, and I was severely underwhelmed by it. I was going to just leave the series behind, but everybody loves it so much that I decided to give it another chance. Well, I can’t fault it for any one particular thing, and I do appreciate the representation that this series brings to the genre, but I just do not care for this series. Very middle of the line for me, unfortunately.

4. The Running Man -Stephen King (406 pgs) 4

I first read The Running Man in sixth or seventh grade. I went through a phase of renting Stephen King audiobooks from the library and listening to them on the floor in my room… very stable behavior. Anyway, I have gone back and reread a lot of them as an adult, on the assumption that I had missed a few things, and this ended up being one of my favorites! I don’t know Suzanne Collins’ take on this, but I feel like The Running Man walked so that The Hunger Games could run?? Definitely a place to start with King if you want to get into his writing and/or if you like dystopian-game shows-to-the-death.  

5. Pretty Girls -Karin Slaughter (688 pgs) 3.5

Wow, what a disgusting book. I will never be able to not think about somebody being waterboarded with urine ever again, thanks Karin. But, as horror/thrillers go, this one was pretty well done, and I liked the way Slaughter writes. I just googled Karin Slaughter to see if she changed her last name to match with the genre she writes in, and all I could find was that she was a contestant on an extreme mini-golf game show, so, here ends the book review??

6. Malibu Rising -Taylor Jenkins Reid (384 pgs) 4

My final read of the month was another buddy read with Carly! I had previously read Daisy Jones and The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by TJR, and they were some of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I can’t say that Malibu Rising was *quite* as good as Daisy or Evelyn, but I did really enjoy it. I LOVE the way TJR writes about the rich and famous, and this one was full of super well-written fictional celebs. A great read!

#august reading wrap up #august reads #booklr #books #book reviews #Stephen king

[alywats]

Some Alopecia Thoughts

It’s September 1st, and this month is Alopecia Awareness Month. If you don’t know, Alopecia Areata is a genetic autoimmune disease that manifests as hair loss. When you have Alopecia your immune system attacks your hair follicles, the way it would attack some “normal” type of antigen. In its most mild form, which is relatively common, it shows up as small patches of temporary hair loss. In rarer, more extreme cases, people with Alopecia Totalis lose all the hair on their scalp, and even rarer still is Alopecia Universalis, where there is no hair anywhere on the body.

When I was four years old, I had long blonde hair. One day my mom was brushing my hair, trying to put it up in a ponytail, and large chunks of it started falling out. Within 2 days I was bald. I have fluctuated between Alopecia Totalis and Universalis for the last 19 years. Sometimes I have eyelashes, sometimes I shave my armpits, sometimes I get really bad allergies because sometimes there’s no hair in my nose. It’s all very glamorous. But it’s also the only way I’ve ever known my body to exist.

As I write, I have more hair on my head and body than I ever have since going completely bald at age 4. I have ½-inch extremely thin, extremely sparse, white hair on my head. I have eyebrows for the first time. And I feel extremely unsettled by this.

I started to think about why this regrowth was bothering me, and there are a few factors I’ve considered. The first is that change is hard no matter what it is. Even when change is positive it can be uncomfortable, so I want to give myself space to be uncomfortable with the change that is happening to my body right now. But that’s not all that’s going on, if I’m honest with myself, I know that I feel uncomfortable because I just spent 19 years learning how to love my body as bald, and it feels unfair that now my body could just “change back” to the way it used to be. As if I went through my teenage years hating myself for nothing. I did the work to love that version of my body and now I simply want to be left alone to be bald in peace. That’s unfortunately not how self-love works.

As I started to reflect on this, I realized that what I am afraid of, is having to learn how to love the way my body looks now, with different amounts of regrowth, thin white hair, and eyelashes on only one eye. And I need to check that shit at the door. My body will always play by its own rules when it comes to hair growth and loss; I learned that I could not control that at the age of 4, and I still cannot control that now. I can love myself or I can hate myself and my scalp will look the same. So I’m going to try to stop wanting to change my body in ways that I can’t, a lesson I thought I had already learned, but that, really, I'm still working on.

Again though, as I dug deeper into all I was feeling about this, body image really wasn’t the main source of anxiety there. Hair regrowth with Alopecia like mine is usually a sign that my immune system is taking a nap. If my immune system is weakened, it doesn’t attack as many hair follicles, and hair is able to grow. I guess I probably don’t need to explain why my immune system showing signs of weakness in the Year of Our Lord 2021 might make me a little unsettled. Doctors really don’t know a lot about autoimmune diseases, they really don’t know what triggered my immune system to start attacking things in the first place, and they really don’t know what could trigger it again in the future. Here’s what they do know: that people with one or more autoimmune diseases are more likely to have multiple (I have 2), and there seems to be a link between getting a serious virus and triggering your immune system. I’d really like to uh, NOT trigger my immune system into developing any more autoimmune diseases (so if y’all could help a bitch out and get vaccinated that’d be great).

Anyway, my body is changing again, and I’m trying to be alright with that. Probably, all of the hair that is growing right now will fall out within the next couple of months. Probably, my immune response to COVID wouldn’t be life-altering. Probably, at some point in my life, modern medicine will be able to tell me more about the way my body works. Probably probably probably.

Those are my Alopecia thoughts on September 1st. That's not everything I could scream about Alopecia or about being a bald woman, but it's what's on my mind today. Usually I am a little averse to questions, but feel free to ask me if you have them, it is Awareness Month after all.

#alopecia #alopecia awareness month #just a little angst #as a treat

[alywats]

Grief and Thursday Night Jazz

I woke up on that Thursday morning, packed my backpack with the essentials: a book, headphones, wallet, mask, keys, phone. I walked about 10 minutes to the coffee shop I go to when I want to sit for a while. My plan was to start reading 1984, to get a coffee with whipped cream on top in a mug ‘for here’. When I got into the line my sister called me, but since I was about to order I declined the call and texted her that I’d call her back in a minute. We talk on the phone all the time, I figured she just wanted to gripe about work or tell me some family gossip, but when I called her back, she told me that one of our family friends had died.

It’s not really my story to tell, but it was sudden and sad. Instead I guess I’ll just write about the way I felt. You know, for therapeutic reasons.

I have a complicated relationship with death, in that, nobody close to me has ever died. I guess that didn’t really change on Thursday either, of course I am heartbroken for his family, and I’m heartbroken that my parents have lost one of their close friends, but really I only knew him tangentially. I am thankful and lucky that I have gone 23 years without a major run-in with grief, I know this to be a privilege. Not that you’re ever prepared for loss, not that you ever get good at grieving, but waiting for the other grief-shoe to drop is something that gives me a deep sense of panic. I don’t know how real loss will affect me.

So I had this uncanny feeling, I was upset and more than I probably should have been. There was nothing I could do from afar, but I also couldn’t sit still. I tried taking a nap, taking a shower, eating some comfort food, sitting outside, listening to music, playing my guitar, calling my sister again, cleaning the bathroom, going to Target, and reading a book. None of these things helped me shake the funny feeling, so I decided to pull out the big guns and Go To A Bar Alone.

Now, I don’t make a habit of sitting alone in bars, let’s get that straight, but there is something very mind-clearing about being in a loud place and alone with your thoughts. Observing people in bars is meditative to me, watching the bartender mix drinks, watching first dates crumble, listening to the weird music choices of whoever is in charge of that kind of thing. Being a wallflower in a crowded bar will snap me out of any funk, if only for a few hours.

I went to the bar behind my apartment building. I figured I shouldn’t walk very far alone at night, and this bar is close enough that my phone’s GPS sometimes thinks that I live there instead of in my apartment. I ordered an Old Fashioned and began my study. It wasn’t long before a group of old men with assorted instruments came in and started playing jazz about a foot from where I had chosen to sit. I didn’t want to leave, I like jazz, but if I *had* wanted to, I would have had to step over amps and spare horns. So, I stayed put, I had more whiskey, I let myself get out of my head and into the fuzz of the bass line. At 11:30 the band left and so did everyone else in the bar; all of a sudden it was just me, the bartender, and my half-finished drink.

She asked me if I had come specifically for Thursday Night Jazz, and I said I lived in the apartments just outside and came in on a whim. We got to talking about our parents. I guess they were just on our minds. We got to talking about death. I guess it was just on our minds. I never talk to strangers, but when you’re the only one sitting at the bar you talk. She told me someone close to her parents had died this week and I told her me too. I told her that’s actually why I was there, because I needed a distraction. She said seeing our parents go through loss humanizes them in ways we hadn’t yet considered. She said Thursday Night Jazz can fix a lot of things, but knowing how to deal with grief isn’t one of them. She said we all just need time. We took a shot together, in the name of loss, and then she closed up the bar and I walked home. I feel a little better now, knowing we all just need a little time.

I don’t believe in fate, not really. But sometimes moments deserve to be recognized and I wanted to write this one down.

#tbh I don't know what this is #a journal entry perhaps? #grief #jazz #writes

[alywats]

the way (love poem)

the way I see it you exist only at golden hour not in the “rose colored glasses” way but in the “you make even the dimmest sidewalks lighter” way. I guess

that’s what it means to fall in love you start really breathing another person’s air and you don’t get squeamish or maybe you do but it’s in the “I’ve never known true loss” way not the “blood on my shoes” way. I guess

what I’m trying to say is that my lungs, they feel like the flowers blooming into the spring that’s what it means to fall in love like a chord, it feels vibrational in the “everything becomes inevitable” way in the “we create dissonance to create resolution” way. and when

I’m underneath, chest against chest we’re in tune like that like fundamental like grounded everything is blending together it all spins, you know, in the “greater than the sum of its parts” way. I guess

this is what it means to fall in love to be unbothered by the plunge less in the “waking up scared” way, taking a step forward trusting in the “give you the keys” way.

#love poem #hello remember me I was once a poet #poem #poet #poetry #I kind of don't like this but I have to get my groove back somehow so we are soldiering on

[alywats]

June/ July 2021 Reading Wrap-Up

So, it’s been a minute, huh? I finished my first year of grad school on June 8th, turned 23 on June 9th, and went face-down-head-empty on June 10th. I am trying to be better about managing burn-out, but that is a discussion for another time. Let’s get caught up on my spicy literary opinions, shall we?? I read significantly less than normal in June and July, but we still have 8 whole books!

1. Shrines Of Upper Austria –Phoebe Power (71 pgs) 4

This is a special poetry collection, because it was written by the person who taught me the most about poetry. In 2018 I signed up for a poetry class during my semester abroad in England, and Phoebe was my workshop leader. Cut to 3 years later, and I still think about pieces of advice Phoebe gave me, every time I write. This collection was published while I was there, and I actually went to the release event and heard her perform some of the poems, but for some reason I hadn’t gone back and actually read the whole book until now.  I love this collection a lot, it’s a mosaic of European stories and histories, specifically as they relate to WW2. I think Phoebe has such a strong voice and such a unique style of writing, in ways that may make some of her work a little difficult to unpack for some readers. Anyways, Phoebe was the first person I ever showed my writing to, she even gave me feedback on a poem that went on to circulate tumblr (lol), and she understood my voice before I really understood it myself… anyways I think you should read this if you’re into poetry!

2. Crush –Richard Siken (62 pgs) 5

I don’t know if I have the right words to describe this book. Are they love poems? Sometimes. This was an absolutely haunting reading experience. All of the poems in this book are so desperate, so obsessive, so panicked, that by the end you just need a deep breath. There is so much blood in the lines of these poems, and I think that’s the best sell I can make? I HIGHLY recommend this.

3. Grocery List Poems –Rhiannon McGavin (80 pgs) 4.5

The last thing I read on The Day I Read A Bunch Of Poetry, and it was by one of my favorite poets. This is Rhiannon’s second collection, and uh, can we get some commotion for the fruit imagery??? I really like this collection, it is very cohesive and so full of her voice (which I have come to love a lot). My favorite poem in this book is Elsa la Rose and I want everyone to read it.

4. West Of Here –Jonathan Evison (486 pgs) 3

Here, my guys, is where things took a turn. I started reading this book on like June 10th, and I did not finish it until JULY 12TH. I don’t know if my brain just finally needed to shut down after finishing a year of grad school, or if this book was actually just that painful to read. Maybe it was some combination of the two, but good lord this book was hard for me to get through. The premise was great: historical fiction about when Washington became a state with a current day Bigfoot B-plot. Woof though: I was  annoyed by every character in this book (oh and there were about 37243875 characters to keep track of across two different timelines), plus I was also kind of annoyed by how #woke and #girlboss some of the characters from the 1800’s timeline were? Clearly Evison was trying to skirt around some of the *ahem* problematic elements of colonizing Washington and treating Indiginous people the way they were treated, and also the way women were treated in the 1800s, etc… but it came off as oversimplified and cringy. This would have been a 2-star review BUT THAT BIGFOOT B-PLOT? I am a simple woman.  

5. The Pisces –Melissa Broder (270 pgs) 3.5

Haha, what? This book has mermaid sex. Okay, it also has some big Ottessa Moshfegh-esque character study elements, where we meet an unlikable narrator and relate to her *too much* for comfort. This is a read where you feel uneasy the whole time and the ending kept me awake for a little while after I finished it. It’s gross, it’s weird, and most of all there is a fish man ready for action. Did I like this? Who’s to say, really.

6. All The Light We Cannot See –Anthony Doerr (531 pgs) 3.5

This I read as a buddy read with my good friend Carly! Carly and I met the first day of college and we did music stuff together throughout. Now, we are both yelling about books on the internet (her book instagram is @book.trunks if you want to check out her hot takes!). But on to this book…. sad, just sad.

This book kind of wrecked me? And I did really like the writing. I became invested in the characters immediately, and the structure of the book felt like a kind of fragmented flashback, which is fitting for a traumatic book about WW2. I am becoming really sensitive to the ways authors use trauma like this though, did this book make me feel things because it was full of good, emotional writing? Or did descriptions of extreme suffering evoke those feelings because I am a human and WW2 was a nightmare? Does this matter? I don’t know, but this book was sad and I *think* I liked it?

7. Sweetbitter –Stephanie Danler (356 pgs) 2.5

This is pretentious lit-fic in its most pure essence. An overwritten coming-of-age/ finding yourself novel with minimal plot set in New York City, baby –the city of dreams! Our protagonist has a tragic past, and working in a fancy restaurant shows her things about the city and its people that make her question her place there. There’s sex and drugs along the way, and maybe NYC isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, hmm? Or, maybe this is *exactly* where she’s supposed to be. Does this sound exceedingly boring and predictable, because it was.

8. Supernatural Strategies For Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group –Ian F. Svenonius (250 pgs) 4

This is a quirky little nonfiction (memoir?? art piece?) about what it means to start a rock ‘n’ roll band! I thought this was super interesting and it reminded me of Chuck Klosterman’s writing a bit, so no complaints here!

#reading wrap up #july reads #June reads #books #book review #booklr

[alywats]

May 2021 Reading Wrap-Up

Happy start of summer!!! I still managed to get some reading in during my last month of the school year, and I’m honestly not sure how that happened. I am SO looking forward to chilling this summer and catching up on my *extremely* long TBR list… Anyways, these are the 7 books I read in May, 4 of which are nonfiction. I guess that was the reading mood I was in this month! I read 2317 pages this month, and you know what I’m pretty proud of that!

1. Branches -Rhiannon McGavin (43 pgs) 4.5

This debut poetry collection by Rhiannon is one of my favorites I’ve ever read. Her poem Chick Lit got a sticky tab permanent bookmark, and I’ve gone back and reread it at least twice a week since I finished the collection. I also feel like mentioning that Rhiannon’s has been a voice I have listened to for years on the internet, and her honesty and class and intelligence has been something I have taken massive inspiration and guidance from. I love this poet and I love this poetry collection.

2. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn -Betty Smith (496 pgs) 5

I didn’t really know what I was in for when I picked up A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I am usually very hesitant to read books dubbed ‘classics,’ because that usually means they are hard to read or outdated or something, and they almost never live up to their hype. This was not the case here, the story is so so moving yet not overly written. It uses language in a beautiful yet simple way, which holds up to a read in 2021. This book is the story of a young girl in Brooklyn, who grows up in early 40s. It is semi-autobiographical of Betty Smith’s own childhood, and there isn’t really a distinct plot; instead there are a series of snapshots which form the mosaic of a story. If I had known these things going in, I probably would have assumed I wouldn’t like it very much, but it ended up being one of the best books I have read this year (and maybe ever). I really recommend this, even if you are hesitant to embark on a classic from the 1940s.

3. Fight Club -Chuck Palahniuk (218 pgs) 3.5

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to read Fight Club, since I have read 3 other books by Palahniuk that are much less universally regarded as classic. He has such a distinct voice, and it's one that I like, but it is very similar between all of his works. Perhaps if Fight Club is your first encounter with his unique brand of satire, then Fight Club feels important. What I find with Palahniuk, is that I think he is an important author to modern literature, but I don’t know exactly which novel of his is an important novel to modern literature, does that make any sense… It's more that Palahniuk’s voice and style as a whole author is what makes his work highly regarded and influential. Since Fight Club is the most popular (I think mostly because it's also a movie), it’s most people’s first/only introduction to Palahniuk, and that’s what makes it even *more* popular.

I don’t know, maybe this is not a good take on Palahniuk, but I think those are my post-Fight Club thoughts.

4. The Anthropocene Reviewed -John Green (293 pgs) 5

I was maybe a little hesitant to read this new John Green book, his young adult novels were very important to me in early high school, but I can recognize that if I read those books for the first time now, I probably would not have as deep of a connection with them. But this book is not young adult fiction, it is a collection of memoir-eque essays about love, life, and being a human right now. John Green and my dad have a lot in common, John Green and I have a lot in common, John Green knows what to say, and when he doesn’t, he knows who to quote. I don’t really know what else to say about this, but if you are hesitant to pick this up like I was, don’t be. It is a beautiful read, both timeless and timely, that I absolutely treasured. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed 5 stars.

5. A Promised Land -Barack Obama (768 pgs) 2.5

This book is too long. Read Michelle’s book instead, I think it’s better, and I think she’s more well-spoken AND a little less self important… hot takes babey.

6. Journey Through Genius -William Dunham (286 pgs) 3

This was a book that I read for school, and it is a broad history of early mathematics. It is a history book from 1990, so it is Eurocentric, and has some weird lines that maybe don’t hold up; but it had factually accurate information, and written in a way that isn’t unbearably dry, so it was okay.

7. Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: An Autobiography -Martin Gardner (213 pgs) 3

This book was also for school. Martin Gardner was the father of recreational mathematics, a branch of mathematics that is purely for entertainment, and I will say much much more about this in the piece I wrote that used this book as research. As for this actual book, it’s fine if you’re interested in this very niche topic, but otherwise it’s definitely a skip.

#reading wrap up #these are some hot takes this month #may reading wrap up #booklr #math history books #the anthropocene reviewed #fight club #a tree grows in brooklyn #nonfiction reads

[alywats]

Math Boy Ego

The question posed in class this week is whether my mathematical career thus far has been more of a collaboration or a competition; an emotional topic for me.

I refused point-blank to join my high school’s math team when a teacher asked me because the boys on the team were mean to me. They were mean to me mostly because I was small and a girl and because I did not look like other girls, but they were also mean to me because I’m sure I was threatening to their mathematical egos. If it were a movie, I would have prevailed and they would have recognized their false biases towards me, but alas, it was not a movie, it was a high school in Southern Oregon. Thus, mathematics was decidedly un-collaborative for me in my early years.

I always knew I would major in math in college, I told my mom that I would when I was about seven or eight, and when I got to college I found a place in collaborative mathematics for the first time. My undergrad university had about ten math majors total during the four years I was there, the program was exceptionally small, and so we all knew each other and worked together through everything. My mentor and main professor was a woman; this was the mathematical experience and community I was longing for.

My junior year of college I got the opportunity to go abroad to Budapest Semesters in Mathematics, which I now lovingly refer to as The Worst Four Months Of My Life (this is very dramatic, but it does have a ring to it). BSM brought me into contact with the best and brightest math undergrads in the USA, and it absolutely destroyed any mathematical confidence I ever had. I signed up for two math classes, as well as a math philosophy class, and a Hungarian language course, and the first week there the leader of the program brought me into his office to let me know that I had the weakest schedule out of everyone and I should be ashamed of myself for slacking off (oh and by the way ‘everyone’ refers mostly to white boys from Ivy League schools).

My time in Budapest was difficult for a myriad of reasons, some mathematical, many not (for instance, my apartment became infested with moths that ate my pillow at one point), but I will never forget how isolated and inferior I felt in a place that I thought I was supposed to belong, and it was because of this competitiveness ingrained in the culture of mathematics. At the end of the semester, at the going away party, the same man who brought me into his office read aloud everyone’s grades, and mine were the worst.

I didn’t know what to do after I graduated with a B.S. in mathematics, because I knew that my beautiful community-driven mathematical bubble at my tiny liberal arts school was far from what the field was really like. Most of the time, when I meet mathematicians, I don’t like them. Most of the time, when I meet mathematicians, there is a man who is talking down to me. I feel like I am in 10th grade, and the boys are unkind.

My final thought is unoriginal; it comes from Eugenia Cheng, a mathematician, writer, and pianist. She released a book in 2020 called X+Y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender. In it she argues that mathematics as a whole does not benefit from this competitive behavior, collaboration is much more effective at producing advances in mathematics, but this is not what the culture of mathematics rewards. People get *in* to math by being competitive, by scoring high on tests, being in high school math competitions, or simply being recognized as best in their class. In professional mathematics, the competition continues, the Field Medal alone is evidence, but the way publications and tenure work don’t help either. Why is mathematics working so hard against its best interest? Why are we acting like mathematics is a finite resource that only some people get to have? Well, because competitive, individualist, superiority-driven traits like this are often traits of men (within and outside of mathematics), and what a vicious cycle that is to break.

I decided to go to grad school anyways, and here I am, still pretty jaded by the way I have interacted with the larger mathematical community, still pretty burnt out by the Mathematical Ego, as I like to call it. Incoming male students to my grad program this year outnumber incoming female students 4:1. I don’t know that mathematics can truly be a collaborative space until it is an inclusive one.

#yo idk I could talk about this a lot more #maybe I will #mathblr #women in math #math boy ego #eugenia cheng #math #competition in math

[alywats]

An Imaginary Number... Sounds Fake But Okay

Imaginary numbers, or, the square roots of negative numbers. For many their introduction is the point at which mathematical reality starts to feel disconnected from physical reality. My friend had this to say about imaginary numbers when asked: “When I first encountered imaginary numbers I thought they were absolutely ridiculous. Biggest math turn-off. I guess my concept of math at the time was that things were real and concrete, equations were something I could trust. Then they threw in imaginary numbers. It sounded silly to me.” Now, from a mathematician’s perspective this can be exciting, from a high school student’s perspective, though, this can be a betrayal. And neither of these sentiments are new; imaginary numbers have been both compelling and dividing throughout their journey to acceptance within mainstream mathematics. But where did they get such an infuriating name?

It was in the first century CE that the story of imaginary numbers begins, with Heron of Alexandria and his calculations involving a pyramidal frustum (the bottom of a pyramid, with the top chopped off). Measurements of length were always positive, of course, but he realized that negative numbers could or should have square roots too. It seems that his notational limitations prevented much further investigation, so Heron left these uncomfortable calculations behind.

Once notation caught up to the problem of taking square roots of negative numbers, mathematicians couldn’t keep ignoring them. It was the sixteenth century, and the Renaissance was full of new mathematical ideas, so it was time for Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano to revisit these types of numbers in his studies of cubic equations . It is important to note here that the study of cubic equations was the main motivation for understanding imaginary numbers, because “mathematicians could easily dismiss the square root of -121 when it appeared as a solution to x2+121=0,” as this has no real solutions, “ but they could not so easily ignore the square root of -121 when it played such a pivotal role in yielding the solutions [to a cubic].” Cubics were the catalyst because they relied on the use of imaginary numbers as the bridge to a real solution, without using them we would be missing some of the very real solutions to cubic equations –something that mathematicians didn’t see with quadratics. Within cubics the imaginary numbers will often end up cancelling out, leaving regular old real solutions that work, and mathematicians couldn’t deny the legitimacy of that!

Cardano was perhaps the first mathematician to keep going with calculations after finding a negative number under the radical, he took the dive and decided to see what would happen, but we know from his writings that he found himself stuck and ill at ease with this use of what we now know as imaginary numbers. Cardano writes in the 1545 Ars Magna “a second type of the false position makes use of roots of negative numbers,” and goes on to say “it is evident that this case or question is impossible. Nevertheless, we shall solve it in this fashion.” He died before he really came to terms with the mathematics he was working with, but luckily he was followed by another mathematician who was equally willing to wade through uncomfortable calculations.

Rafael Bombelli, another Italian mathematician, wrote a treatise on Algebra in 1572, and it is here that we see the first true consideration of our imaginary numbers. He used them “as a necessary vehicle that would transport the mathematician from the real cubic equations to its real solutions,” legitimizing the use of these impossible numbers. But these numbers still didn’t have a name (or very much acceptance within mainstream mathematics), and that is where we meet René Descartes in his 1637 publication La Géométrie, for the naming of the imaginary numbers.

“Neither the true nor false roots are always real; sometimes they are imaginary; that is, while we can always conceive of as many roots for each equation as I have already assigned, there is not always a definite quantity corresponding to each root so conceived of,” Descartes says, and not with admiration. Imaginary numbers were named as a response to how ridiculous mathematicians thought they were, how difficult it was for them to accept that these numbers could be useful in ‘real’ mathematics. That was the insult that Descartes could give to these numbers, to call them imaginary, and this is an insult that has carried through to the high school classroom. Questions like “when will I ever use this in real life?” are perhaps never louder than when the topic of imaginary numbers is upon an algebra class. Are imaginary numbers actually imaginary though, or did Descartes’ petty name for them simply stick?

This begs the question of what it means for mathematics to be realmathematics. G.H. Hardy, in A Mathematician’s Apology, wrote of the differences between physical reality and mathematical reality, and how much more ‘realistic’ mathematical reality is. He says, “a chair or a star is not in the least like what it seems to be; the more we think of it the fuzzier its outlines become in the haze of sensation that surrounds it; but ‘2’ or ‘317’ has nothing to do with sensation, and its properties stand out the more clearly, the more closely, we scrutinize it,” and he finishes by saying that “mathematical reality is built [this] way.” So, in a sense, imaginary numbers are imaginary, we made them up as part of mathematical reality, but imaginary numbers are also real, the way all of mathematics is real, because we have built a mathematical reality, and mathematical reality would start to fall apart without them. Imaginary numbers are essential and inevitable when we solve equations, and in modern engineering and physics, imaginary numbers have proven to be useful tools when considering signal processing (think: radar, brain waves, cellular technology), so with that we cannot deny their ‘realness,’ their ‘validity,’ to use a more agreeable adjective.

Perhaps Descartes’ naming of the imaginary numbers left a lot to be desired, but as a famous seventeenth century bard once said, “what’s in a name? that which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet.” Then, that which we call an imaginary number, by any other name would still solve a quadratic.

#descartes was petty pass it on #imaginary numbers #mathblr #math #complex numbers #math history #writes #I didn't include sources but plz lmk if you want/need them

[alywats]

Sad Songs 4 Sad Girls (#17)

Sorry -dodie

Build A Problem, dodie’s debut (!!) album has just come out at the time of writing, and it is a Sad Songs 4 Sad Girls masterpiece. I think the use of strings on a pop album is an excellent choice, and I wish more artists would go there as boldly as dodie does on BAP. Now, Sorry is my pick for the Sad Songs 4 Sad Girls list because it is crying music at it’s best. It starts soft, with the lyrics “it happened fast / like a fired gun / bleeding out / then it was done,” which are extremely cutting lyrics to sing at such a quiet volume. The whole song is a building crescendo: in comes the string section with tremolo, and then cellos have the melancholy melody, and then as if we are in a musical, the violins swell and dodie narrates/sings “and I know, I’ve always known, in the end I’d be sorry / and that’s all I am now, and it’s all I can be / is sorry,” and then it’s as if she exits the stage and the strings begin to fade out. That’s how much emotion is in this song, that it feels like the pivotal scene in a musical, which we all know is perfect for crying… okay maybe I’m projecting, but I love this song and this album and to me it makes a grand addition to the Sad Songs 4 Sad Girls list.

#sad songs 4 sad girls #dodie #build a problem #more orchestral pop 2021!!!

[alywats]

March/April 2021 Reading Wrap-Up

March and April were weird and/or great months for me, and I was very distracted from reading. So, I combined both months reading into this one wrap-up, so that it would be normal sized. Here are all the books I read in March and April!!

1. The Right Swipe -Alisha Rai (387 pgs) 2.5

This is a romance-y book about dating apps, which I read to make myself feel better, and which *did* make me feel better. It also made me cringe. Sometimes we all need a little bit of escapism, mmkay? I will not be taking any further questions.

2. Autumn -Ali Smith (264 pgs) 3.5

Autumn is the first of four seasonal novels about Brexit and its aftermath. The subtlety with which Smith is able to entwine the plot and commentary about Brexit is simply stunning, BUT, and this is a big BUT, in a very forgetful way. Maybe this is just me, but the mundanity was just a little bit *too* pronounced.

3. Tools of Engagement -Tessa Bailey (368 pgs) 2.5

I don’t have a lot of words for this read, either. When you’re angsty about a boy you have to read shitty romance novels, I don’t make the rules besties. This was very cringy, but also kind of sweet, the way a shitty romance novel should be, I guess.

4. Intimations -Zadie Smith (97 pgs) 4

Essays about Covid, and uh every other apocalyptic nightmare that 2020 threw out there….whew, this hits hard to be honest. Zadie Smith writes with such clarity and voice, these essays capture what so many people felt in 2020, and I really really enjoyed them.

5. The New Me -Halle Butler (193 pgs) 3.5

This was very reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh to me, and I mean that as mostly a compliment. It was weird and had an unlikable main character, who was relatable so that she would make you feel bad because you saw yourself in her. I think because I have seen this before it just didn’t land as well, but this is good for introspective moods.

6. Good Omens -Neil Gaiman & Terry Prachett (491 pgs) 3

WOW, I really wanted to like this and I just didn’t. There are a lot of objectively great things happening; it’s witty and smart and self aware. There was just something about the pacing that was sooooo off to me and it made it SO hard to get through. Maybe it just caught me at a bad time? I think I am going to try the TV show because the premise and the quirks are very intriguing to me, the full execution just fell short.

7. Killing Yourself To Live -Chuck Klosterman (245 pgs) 5

This was a reread for me. Klosterman is one of my favorite authors (if not my favorite author), and he always knows just what to say to make me think about things differently. This was the first book I ever read by him, and it’s all about legacy, death, love, and rock & roll, baby. It made me cry, it made me write, and it made me fall in love with it all over again. I seriously love this book.

8. Slaughterhouse-Five -Kurt Vonnegut (275 pgs) 4

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from my first Vonnegut, but I think this surpassed it. The satire was on point, the sci-fi stuff was cool, and the political commentary was neither over or under-done. “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt,” is a quotable quote for a reason and I might be a pretentious asshole for it, but I am *entering* my Vonnegut phase.

9. A Mathematician's Apology -G.H. Hardy (153 pgs) 5

I have too much to say about this book. It made me so emotional and wrecked me completely. I loved it. I think every high schooler in AP calculus should have to read it. I think every college student should have to read it (again). I think you should have to read it. This is a book that changed my life, and I’m not even being (that) dramatic.

10. Ode To Numbers -Sarah Glaz (112 pgs) 5

This collection of poems is so so striking. This is what I’m yelling about when I yell about math poetry. If you can get your hands on this book, I highly recommend it. My favorite poem is the one called Hardy, which of course came to me just after I read Hardy for the first time. Glaz and I had similar thoughts on the matter, and it absolutely gave me a case of The Existentials.

#booklr #books #march reading wrap up #April reading wrap up #reads #reading #reading wrap up

[alywats]

Bellingham Bae

I have a crush on the bay the way spring light reflects her shimmer and glow the way I wish to be inside of her but cannot not yet

the bay is my girlfriend the way I listen to John Denver and stare ask her to let me love her the way she is a body I know well, yet discover

the bay is my ex-wife the way her depths haunt me the way I cry blue tears when I think of her because she will always own a part of me

#written on my balcony #while staring at Bellingham Bay #Bellingham bay #bellingham #poem #poet #poetry #love poem #Washington