May 18th, 2023. Görlitzer Park.
Today, I had the most wonderful time smoking a reefer. I am neither ashamed to admit that this was my first time, at the ripe age of 151, nor that I am ready to do it again at a moment’s notice. As Marie said, what fun is left for us at this age?
It was the last thing I expected to happen today. The symposium on imaginary numbers had run overtime and I was late for my rendezvous with the widow von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. I was too preoccupied with finding the right words for an apology to be thinking of anything else. This was to be our first meeting… and I was late! Even as I arrived and found Marie in bonne humeur (not only did she not mind that I was late, she didn’t seem to notice the time at all), it took me a while to notice the joint in her hand.
‘Vat fun is left for us at our age?’ she said. ‘Have you hit ze ganja before, Bertrand?’
‘I have not,’ I told her. ‘But my grandfather was partially responsible for the Opium Wars in the East. So, there is a light apprehension, you could say.’
‘Ve von’t cause a var, I promise.’
I laughed because that was what my grandfather had said, and he did it without a German accent. Marie and I found a little bench away from the looping paths and she passed me the spliff.
I would describe the first moments as nothing short of agony. The smoke in my lungs didn’t want to stay there and my throat began to itch. I coughed for so long and so hard that I thought one of my organs would jump out. When I heard Marie ask me about my symposium, I no longer had the mind to reply. That’s when I knew the herb had started its work.
What came next has altered my view of the world, no less.
Irrational numbers, my blue-blooded British behind. The entirety of mathematics came to unravel itself in this little city park. It first appeared to me in the form of a snake slithering through the grass. I was ready to jump when I noticed it ripping apart at the mouth in a Fibonacci sequence, curling backwards. As it did, it’s teeth and scales evaporated into bubbles that moved through the air along an invisible path, spiralling in a set deviation. I was going to ask Marie if she saw it, too, but was afraid to lose my own thread. Just then a group of children walked in front of our bench. Each of their colourful jackets formed fractals on the outside of their silhouette. When I stared at one for long enough, I dove into the colour, stepping into yellow or red, and walked around. I felt like an foundational ingredient in Geothe’s Farbenlehre. What calamity! My body was without any pain, for the first time in 130 years, but trapped! I was aware of my condition without the ability to speak or write, as a result of which I remained seated in silence until the effects subsided. When I came to, it was dusk, and I was by myself.
I ran to my suite to write this note before I would forget the immediate sensations. I shall call Marie to thank her, tout de suite.
Photo courtesy of FamousMathematicians.Net