Some Greater Than Zero

Growing up, I was always reasonably good at math until we started getting into really advanced stuff and then they started to lose me. By the time I got to college, I was cast completely adrift. It is probably for the best that I dropped out. I guess Barbie was right. Math is hard! However, I was always really drawn to the idea of the asymptote. According to Wikipedia, “an asymptote of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as they tend to infinity.” In essence, it is a line that draws closer and closer to zero but never actually reaches it.

For me, so much of life is an asymptote. I can always get close to whatever it is that I want, sometimes insanely close, but then never actually reach it. It is maddening enough to face life as a restless character out of a Tennessee Williams play, so much bigger on the inside than can safely be housed in your own body that you forever feel the need to claw your way out of your own skin. Sometimes it feels like the very fabric of reality can’t hold me and if I could only punch hard enough, I could get out of it, making the kind of improbable escape from my own being that no less than Houdini was always looking for.