From the pen of a pained and pining physicist, a verse celebrating mathematical madness of being in love; requires elementary knowledge of the behavior of non-linear systems and of chaotic dynamics.
My chaotic love
In all probability are lost
the positive eigenvalues of hope
abstracted from the coupled equations
of your swaying moods
and my time independent love;
I should have known though
only instabilities arise from
the positive eigenmodes of expectation
and in evolving, co-dependent desires
chaos is inevitable;
I knew from onset, yet doubted
the predicted behavior of us,
construing separation as an artifact
of our linear linear thinking or erratic,
faulty mapping of our realities;
Our disjointed worlds interacted
through ephemeral, random junctions;
your eyes perturbed me to oscillate
till my will enslaved, spiraled me headlong,
trapping me in the basins of your attraction;
My passions had stretched and folded
my dreams and desires to space fill
even the remotest eddies of my heart
and in the complexity of my thoughts
I saw my chaotic love as simply beautiful.
Dec 13, 2005
Atlanta, GA.
PS: To fully appreciate the mathematics underlying the metaphors and similies in this verse, please read any standard text on non-linear dynamics and chaos. The text by Strogatz is a nice introduction, though Gleick's Chaos is recommended reading for anyone interested in knowing about the rockstars of the science of chaos, and reading about the genesis of their most celebrated results.
For mathematicians who have yet experienced only chaos and no love, no books can teach them anything of the latter, and it must be experienced first-hand, for there is no known method of abstracting it from other people's experiences.
4 comments:
linear autonomous diff eqn are beautiful indeed. :-) Lyapunov rocks! :-)
The object of your affections sounds like a strange attractor Vivek, in more ways than one ;)
gosh....ur life really is 'at the edge of chaos' Vivek...and ur stange attractor I'm sure is beautiful :) nice poem...btw, why don't u try teaching poetry in one of ur lectures next time? :)
enig!
This made me feel the way I normally feel when I read/hear a nice Urdu poem...hungry for a complete grasp of each and everything written, particularly the metaphors....alas...math and me dont have a very good relationship.... :-)) But that gives us a new thing to yack about eh!!
The intensity is back...and I love it!! :-D
...some can thrive only in chaos...glad to have company!! :-))))))
much love,
chay
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