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i am i, in the light of the i.

I wrote a poem about a week back, when i wandered around as the imaginary constant i.
As it turns out, there were parts of the poem that didn't just look like mathematical allusions, but ideas we could associate with ourselves.

The Engineer in me insists that the mathematical meaning in the poem is not lost and so, I figured I would write explaining what I really had in mind, when I wrote this.
(It is amazing how the notation gave me freedom to do a duality of a biographical context of the imaginary context, as well as an almost autobiographical).




i was thrown into a numeropolitan,
painted with hues of pure emotion.

i was thrown into a numeropolitan - a city of numbers. Numbers, big and small everywhere. This little guy was thrown in there - with no real meaning. There was no reason for his existence and in many contexts, emotion is almost the antonym of reason. And so, I said that i was painted with hues of pure emotion - absolutely no reason in it.


Looking to find righteous company,
amidst the condescending reality.

i always looked for corresponding company. The reality there refers to the real numbers - the guys who would look down so condescendingly upon the imaginary number. When a real number 5 is added to an imaginary number, the result is tainted with segragation - 5 + i.



i gazed unto the pinnacles of exponents,
and the abysses of their complements.

i was wandering, wondering at the immensity of the large numbers like 10^100 and the infinite minisculity of the complementing small numbers like 10^-100.



and the giant factory of Equation,
churning strokes pregnant with information.

i also came across the grand idea of an equation - a place constructed by scientists and engineers, who churn out these numbers, that are packed with so much information and insight into the world they live in. The numbers that are nothing but a few strokes of a pen, are in reality so much full of information.



i was just a figment of pure imagination,
born to perform no real function.
Yet, i feel like a fuckin' mistress,
in the altitude of the high priestess.

the very name imaginary number is associated with this son of a gun. He has no real function. Nonetheless, the number is used, abused and thrown away in the mathematical hypotheses of High Thought.


i searched the partials and the voluptuous rounds,
and was chased like by a pack of angry hounds.

i looked absolutely everywhere for company, amidst the fractional numbers and the whole numbers and no one wanted to associate themselves with me.


i was going round and round in circles,
and met a madman chased since the time of Pericles.

and so, i was still looking around in circles, when guess who he meets! Mr. π . That beautiful constant who is being calculated since the 6th century BC, by Archimedes. Even today, π is chased - the current record stands at 15 trillion digits. That's correct - 15,000,000,000,000 digits after the decimal.

"Stay and wait with me for my darling wife,
any time now, she shall descend - the toil of Euler's life.

π tells i to wait with him for his wife - the exponential constant - Euler's constant e.



Together, we shall escape into reality".
to whom i said "why, it's your pop-in-law's identity!".

He tells him of this beautiful Truth called Euler's identity, e = -1 and tells him that the three most intriguing numbers in Maths can come together in an almost Holy Trinity to create reality!


And so, i roamed this universe,
whose response to me was always perverse.

And so, i just kept roaming around this universe of numbers, with the blemish of imagination on him.


and then it all came back to me,
i had known what was known to the Yogi.

At that point, it all came back to him. He had know what is known to the Great men of bygone age. Rabindranath Tagore says in Gitanjali "The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky"



i had found what i had needed in i.
i no longer heeded the words of hatred coming by,

And so, i had found what i was searching in himself. He had wandered the universe searching for something that was within. Because, the square root of negative one, requires just another of the same to be considered real!


for i was escaping into a world of reality,
little did i know, i was to shoulder the burden of negativity......

With this, the dreams of reality were being realized, but another blemish would show itself - that of being a negative one.

Comments

Unknown said…
This is too heavy on the math for me to get even after the explanation.

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