Wednesday, April 25, 2007

frustration

As my mind wanders further into the insanity of physics, math, psychology, and writing, I write more and more poems about math, fusing the the parts of my mind. What is frustrating is that nobody that reads them (or will ever read them) understands them.

For instance, this poem. I know that everyone can get the main idea about going crazy within society, but there are a lot of intricate symbols and allusions that I really want to explain.

RESONANCE
[it doesn't matter if you scream.
at some point in the discontinuity
you are lost.]

three dimensions aren't enough
for the insane
who vibrate against the forces
of normalcy

on either side
the numbers approach
the point at which it all breaks down

oscillations grow wider and wider
cognitive cells stretch at points
we cannot touch with our fingers
that can be described
with so few coordinates

beat
beat
beat
(the drum of the insane)
RESONANCE
this is when you fall, when you fall,
when you fall
beat
beat
beat

they come in floods,
the men and women
whose minds tear through the tissue
of the known

every string against the system,
damped by reality.
every heart breaking haltingly
with the swaying of the bridge.

it happens slowly, you see.
three beats, one rip in time,
one fall into a place where no one
can reach you.

[you never existed.
pick the lefthand value.
pick the you that never was.]

Yes, the poem was written when I was feeling kind of crazy and thinking incessently. The idea of the poem was that you could describe the oscillations of string theory with a differential equation. I know now that this may not work for what the poem is about, because a string theory equation would require partial derivatives due to the multiple dimensions. There's a few other problems as well. But the poem still holds its basic idea.
For a forced undampened second order differential equation with a first coefficient of one, as the imaginary square root of the first coefficient (1) times four times the third coefficient times negative one approaches the # of the forcing function sin/cos(#t), the oscillations develope beats, and finally when the two numbers are equal, resonance occurs, creating wild oscillations that just get bigger and bigger.
So the normal three dimensions aren't enough for a string or something that vibrates through multiple dimensions. Symbollically, this means that our society's assumptions etc. aren't enough for some people that sense something more. On either side the numbers approach break down because the numbers describing the vibrations of the insane people approach the forcing function, at which resonance, or complete insanity, occurs. As the oscillations grow wider and wider, the insane stretch out of ordinary four dimensional (described with four coordinates) space time. Beats occur close to resonance. Reality can act as a damper, because damped second order equations don't exhibit resonance. The swaying of the bridge is the swaying of reality, but it also represents the equation, as dampened second order equations generally describe bridges. The beginning and ending part in brackets is because the function isn't consistent at resonance, because the oscillations spike to infnity. When trying to calculate the limit of a function at a point of discontinuity (like in Dirac-Delta functions), you're supposed to use the left hand value, which means, since oscillations are essentially a function of time, you choose the value of the position at an earlier time. At a time early enough, the insane poeple cease to exist. So you have to choose the time before they are born.

It all makes sense to me, but nobody else gets it.

2 comments:

view_from_the_fishbowl said...

"but nobody else gets it"-- maybe not in the technical, full way you do, but i've always thought that that is not the point of poetry (or most writing, for that matter), and it's very rare that anyone even comes close to fully getting out of it what you put into it. i think this is preferable, personally.
it is a good, multi-layered poem and i like it not least because it's "about physics" (it also clearly demonstrates more) :)

Lindsay said...

you are right, of course. every poem contains many things that nobody gets. i occasionally get obsessed with structures (like the way this poem is syntatically symmetrical, showing the approach to resonance and the descent), and i wish everyone knew about geeky math stuff so they could share.

thank you, though. it means something to me that this poem has more than math structure.