a vestige of thought...
Thursday, August 03, 2006
On why words are cooler than numb3rs
Written in my journal 7/8/06 (probably quite early in the morning), edited a little:
Sometimes I am disinclined to believe in prime numbers. I mean, with a number as big as 7,057, surely SOMETHING must go into it. Or 101. It's so... palendromic. It seems odd and a bit frightening to me that it has no factors besides 1 and itself. Why do I find this frightening? I don't know. Maybe because when I think of a [large] priome number, I imagine that number and one in my head [101; 1]. And then other numbers start to pass through my head as I try to disprove its... primacy [52... 10... 16... 21... 7... 3... 18...]. And soo the numbers woosh past each part of my brain and I start to hear a sort of flapping noise, like wind ripping through the pages of a book too quickly to understand. I like to see my books' pages; to lovingly move over them with my eyes and mine and to mull over each word and sentence, working out different meanings. Words can mean so many different things. For example: "I'm tired." It can mean (among other things):
~I want to sleep
~I want to go home
~whatmakesyouthinkyouaretiredforIsurelyhavemorereasontobethanyou!
~my muscles are lacking oxygen
~of course I am tired, what would make you assume otherwise?
~I have been working hard all day
~I am lazy
On the other hand, numbers are so exact, so confining, yet so completely infitite and difficult to grasp. Two plus two ALWAYS equals four. No shades of meaning there.
NOTHING can be divided into 7, 057. Why not? Why are there only 10 digits? Could we understand so much if there were 12? Or only 6?
Bah. Give me words any day.
Sometimes I am disinclined to believe in prime numbers. I mean, with a number as big as 7,057, surely SOMETHING must go into it. Or 101. It's so... palendromic. It seems odd and a bit frightening to me that it has no factors besides 1 and itself. Why do I find this frightening? I don't know. Maybe because when I think of a [large] priome number, I imagine that number and one in my head [101; 1]. And then other numbers start to pass through my head as I try to disprove its... primacy [52... 10... 16... 21... 7... 3... 18...]. And soo the numbers woosh past each part of my brain and I start to hear a sort of flapping noise, like wind ripping through the pages of a book too quickly to understand. I like to see my books' pages; to lovingly move over them with my eyes and mine and to mull over each word and sentence, working out different meanings. Words can mean so many different things. For example: "I'm tired." It can mean (among other things):
~I want to sleep
~I want to go home
~whatmakesyouthinkyouaretiredforIsurelyhavemorereasontobethanyou!
~my muscles are lacking oxygen
~of course I am tired, what would make you assume otherwise?
~I have been working hard all day
~I am lazy
On the other hand, numbers are so exact, so confining, yet so completely infitite and difficult to grasp. Two plus two ALWAYS equals four. No shades of meaning there.
NOTHING can be divided into 7, 057. Why not? Why are there only 10 digits? Could we understand so much if there were 12? Or only 6?
Bah. Give me words any day.
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