infinity

A funny thing happened when I started writing my poem for today. Halfway through a different poem said, “No, write me instead!”

A true tale….

I once read a book
where every distinct idea
received its own line,
prose as poem,
purposefully presenting them
in bite-sized pieces.

I remember it because
at sixteen years
I learned about infinity
this way, how
one infinity can be bigger than another.
Before this, I had thought
"Infinity is just Infinity,"
never dreaming 
"it" should be "they,"
never considering 
they could be quantified 
(kind of).

"Think of all the numbers on a number line,
how they go on to Infinity.
Call it Set A.
What if we add one to Set A?
Call it Set B. 
Set B must be bigger!"

"Think how a number line goes from Zero to One.
If you go halfway from One to Zero,
then halfway again, 
and so on:
obviously you'll never get to Zero.
It's an Infinity, but...
since it's contained between Zero and One,
just as obviously it's smaller 
than the infinities we discussed with Sets A and B."

My mind was blown. No
wonder I took psychotropics.
What else could I do to 
fill the spaces it had made?

23/100

I read a book once. I checked it out of my high school library; I was a sophomore. It was arranged like this, one concept per line, and it explained infinity. A difficult concept, so only one idea per line. It taught me that one infinity can exist inside another, therefore the second infinity's bigger. And if you add "1" to the second infinity, it's bigger than it was before. I read this book while waiting for our wrestling team to compete. I co-managed the team, and I relished being the one to watch the locker room during matches meaning I could read uninterrupted for a long time. This book both increased, and decreased, my awe for The Infinite, and it did nothing to explain how more than fifty years later I see/feel/understand what went through my head as I read this book while young men in stretchy uniforms grabbed each other's crotch.

Tag: infinity

Infinities