I recently made a trip to the far away land of Guelph, Ontario, where I spent two days and two nights in languid conversation and non-conversation with Russell. Sometimes it was boisterous and silly (well, I was boisterous and silly), sometimes quiet and considered, sometimes as revealing as it was silent.
In one of these moments of silent pleasure I was idly perusing the contents of his large, L-shaped desk. Three houseplants, their chloroplasts aglow with deep green health, greeted me mutely. A large laptop, all corners and matte finish spoke to its electronic cousins through black snakes- skinny and docile. Elegant configurations of tiny spherical earth magnets perched unassumingly amongst office supplies, next to a small stack of notepaper, the sides of which were patterned with pictograms of DNA, gears, a leaf, a power symbol, a water droplet- white on blue. On the one narrow shelf of the desk, above a row of CDs, a glass paperweight the size of my fist seemed to sink into the pale laminate. Its surface had been partially frosted in the shape of Earth's oceans, and much of our dear Antarctica unceremoniously sliced off to prevent the world from rolling heavily towards the centre of Earth Proper, likely obliterating any pencils or keyboards that may stand in its path.
Russell was stretched out on his twin bed, beneath the window in the alcove created between the desk and the far wall. I sat perched on the edge of the bed, peering at the backsides of the inhabitants of L-desk, if inanimate objects can be said to have backsides. They didn't seem to mind. I was looking at a small unglazed white sculpture of a hand with fingers crossed, the fingers supporting a thin white cotton rope Russell had fashioned into a tiny noose. Leaning against the bone-white hand was a bleached white strip of paper with one turn in it- a three-dimensional representation of a two-dimensional object, known as a Möbius Strip. The brilliant thing is that with a piece of tape and strip of paper, in two movements you have an object with just one side. The simplicity and elegance of it are among my favourite things in this universe or the next.
Here is a nifty video featuring fabulous kitchen tiles and a dramatic ending. It's a real live Möbius Strip, folks!
And this is a Klein Bottle, which is an even freakier, even MORE 3D version of a Möbius Strip! You can see at the end of the animation as it is peeled back, that it becomes a simple Möbius Strip. Pure poetry.
I like to touch things, especially those with seductive textures, and there was no way that I wasn't going to handle that paperweight once I laid eyes on it. So I was hefting it in my hand, and peering closely at it, touching the finest sandpaper texture of the frosted oceans, and the cold liquid perfection of the continents. I looked closer, into the globe at the undersides of the continents- and the pure transparent inside seemed impossibly larger than the outside. Ah, refraction! I adjusted my grip and there, in finest magnified clarity was my fingernail, appearing giant and in horrifying detail. You see, I have Wilde skin, which is not known for being either alabaster or naturally moist- rather, it is more akin to fine sand in colour and humidity. So I have perpetual hangnails which range from ordinary to utterly extraordinary (to remain polite about it). At least I was only exposed to my right forefinger, and my fascination was thus able to override my horror and I played with it a little longer before being forced to put down the globe and pick up my hand cream. Russell smiled from his position on the pillow, propped up with his chin in his right hand, and said, "I wondered when you'd figure that part out."
And so, while drifting rather "aimlessly" (for our choices are always informed by our interests, even half-unconscious hyperlink-clicking) through the interwebs, I found this video had a particular resonance with my discoveries while exploring L-desk. You'll see what I mean, I think.
A worthwhile travel through a miniature landscape- a fortunate stumbling upon more technologically skilled individuals' explorations of the phenomena of our world...
...it's funny how things line up sometimes. It makes me smile inside and out.
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