Motivated by two parts curiosity and one part politeness, I recently attended a math lecture ("On Knudsen's Law for an Irrational Triangular Billiard") given by a colleague of my husband, Benoit.
Though it wasn't hell, I didn't understand one lick of the math. But I did understand the premise. It was about the movement of low-density gas particles through a pipe, and whether or not that movement can be predictable.
It's good image to start this blog with, because I've been bouncing around my whole life, ricocheting from place to place, just like today’s low-density gas particles (which gives irony to my mother's oft-repeated plaint regarding yours truly: "Will you just settle down? You're like a fart on a griddle").
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| Round and round and round they go, where they end up, only math nerds know. |
In my defense, it's at least partially her fault. By the age of 7, I'd already moved three times and lived in three states. I was born in Alaska, a military brat. My dad was in the Air Force. When I was three, we were transferred to Delaware. (Yes, people really do live in Delaware. Some of them even live to tell the tale.) A couple years later, as a consequence of divorce, my mother took me and my sister to live with my grandparents in Vallejo, California.
The carrier-pigeon pattern had been initiated.
The carrier-pigeon pattern had been initiated.
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| O, the ominous innocence of childhood! |
In Vallejo, my mother got a job on Mare Island, a military base. Me and my sister went to school on base with a bunch of other military brats. In fact, because of the transitory lives of military families, the Mare Island school was in session for sporadic periods of time year-round. It’s called the 45-15 plan: You go to school for 45 days, then you get 15 days off. No summer break.
The problem was that neither me nor my little sister nor my stressed-out single mom could keep it straight. There were more than a few times when me and my sister were dropped off at school, only to find that school was closed. We’d play on the monkey bars for a while and then wander down a path toward a nursery, where they’d take us in for the day and call our mom to have her pick us up after work. It was the antithesis of being a latchkey kid: Instead of showing up to an empty house after school, we were showing up to an empty school after leaving the house.
Is it any wonder I'm a drifter?
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| Googled "Mare Island" and found this. I'm 90% sure this is the nursery I went to when school was deserted. |
My mom loves a man in a uniform, so it was only a matter of time before her good looks and sassy charms hooked her a naval commander: my future stepdad, Joe Moran. Great guy, great dad, God rest him.
So at age 8, we were moving again, this time to Concord, California. I managed to live out the rest of my secondary-school education in Concord. But once I graduated at age 17, I was released again into the carrier-pigeon life. I was off.
Ground I've Covered So Far:
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com
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| There's still a lot to see and do, but this carrier pigeon is seriously considering retiring. Maybe in Brazil. |
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com
My point, in giving this back story on my lifelong restlessness, is to say this: “This carrier pigeon wants to nest now.” And the only way to do that is to put down roots. To invest in this life, where I am now: São Carlos, Brazil. And to do that, I need to pay attention; to stay interested. To stay awake and to notice all the quirks of this new territory: the hilarious, the precarious, the nefarious. That's what this blog is all about. Mostly anyway. (You can always count on a drifter for a cagey prose style.)
So that's the back story, in a nutshell. And here I am. Neither I nor the brightest mathematician could have predicted that this fart on a griddle would end up married to a French/Swiss mathematician and living in a small Brazilian city. But that's the way this random dynamical system has played out.
So far.
So that's the back story, in a nutshell. And here I am. Neither I nor the brightest mathematician could have predicted that this fart on a griddle would end up married to a French/Swiss mathematician and living in a small Brazilian city. But that's the way this random dynamical system has played out.
So far.
