improbabilities Quill (For blather, this is a long story.) Improbabilities I remember his telling the story to me one day before he set off to spend a month in a cave waiting to find three neutrinos, if he were lucky. He knew I was considering a long term relationship with a woman I'd fallen in love with and needed to know more about what he had seen in this woman in his life. This woman whom he "appreciated very deeply from before I first set eyes on her and even before I had confirmation she existed," as he always told me with a smile and an extraordinary pause followed by a slight shrug of the shoulders. "I attended her departmental seminar, as I always did. She would give two of them each year after she won the big award. Usually I knew in considerable detail what she was going to say, because we would have worked on her presentation together, like we also did on all of mine. "Mind you, my expertise was in a different field altogether. But we learned after a few years of 'struggle' - and I wish such struggles on all lovers - how to read each other's papers and grant applications and, yes, minds. "Still, this time, in the two days before her talk, I had great difficulty connecting with her. She was in some sort of frenzy over something. We usually got up in the morning at the same time, but she barely slept those days and always got up in the wee hours. All I knew was that she had decided to change the topic of the talk from the one we had been working on for the previous weeks. "'I'm on to something,' she told me. I knew from the few times she had told me this before in similar frenzies that the best I could do for her was keep her cup filled with coffee from beans I had freshly ground. "'Remember, Dear, half and half in every other cup,' she always reminded me. So I could always remind her that my mind was not at her level but I did have one. Then she would always shoot back 'I know, Love, I am so glad our minds are so mixed up.' I guess every relationship needs its routines. That was one of ours. "Also, she always said I made the best coffee she had ever enjoyed. Why that meant so much to me I still do not know, but it did and she knew it did and so she never quit saying it. "So I walked with her to the campus in the morning, as we usually did when one or the other of us was not traveling or doing research under some mountain or something. Usually we would be gabbing up a storm, looking at weeds and flowers in little patches along the way, greeting people who would also be out. We liked best chatting with younger students, because of all the life and energy and interest in the world and learning about it that they had; besides we felt it helped keep us young, not that she needed that. Yes, we also would comment to one another about the latest astronomical or political events, discuss what poems or stories we were next going to read with each other, what plays or concerts we would like to attend, whether we were going to do the Seattle to LA bike trip in the coming year. Things like that. "This day, it was silence. A silence dripping with respect and love and, on my part, intense anticipation for what I would be part of that evening. I understood she was still working things out, she was not relaxed, she was still nervous, she was not yet able to savor the intense release and satisfaction that would come later, even though she knew it would as much as I did. "So we reached the door of her department and I just took her hand and kissed it and said 'See you later, Love. I'll be in my usual place in the back.' "I didn't really want to leave her then. To watch and listen to her work was a fascinating thing for me. I cannot emphasize enough how startlingly brilliant and what an excellent teacher she was. I found that by observing her work I could learn a lot, not just about her subject, which obviously interested me, but also about how to be more insightful and a better teacher. Besides I think she liked me around some of the time, and I would do anything the laws of thermodynamics would allow to make her happy. "That day especially she needed that freshly brewed coffee from freshly ground beans. But I knew that more than anything she needed to be alone until I would see her again that evening. So I went off, perhaps more pensively than usual, to my own work. 'Whatever is she going to say tonight'? was on my mind all day long. "So the time arrived. I had greeted some of her colleagues and students and was now ensconced in my usual chair in the back of the seminar room. "Sheets with the abstract of her talk were handed out. They were still warm from having been photocopied just a few minutes before. Besides the usual biographical information, the abstract was one simple, powerful sentence: 'A flaw in the Theory of Impossibility has been found and will be discussed.' As people read the abstract, there was a buzz of excitement throughout the room. Our dear friend Mike, one of her colleagues in her department, looked back at me from where he was in the opposite corner of the room like maybe I knew something about what she was going to say. All I could do was shrug my shoulders. "But, God, I knew it was going to be good. Literally I was turned on. Full blast! "The seminar was of course complete dynamite. Overwhelming to everyone in the audience. None more than me, of course. Hey, I had nursed her through the genesis of this thing! It was a tour de force of intellectual power that one is very lucky to experience more than a few times. "I am not sure she ever really came completely down from that high. I am not sure I have to this day. "Starting later that evening, though, we were back in our own, very warm world. I remember the next morning, it was a Friday, I made a point of picking her a bouquet of dandelions from the edge of a yard on our walk to school. This yard was somewhat unkempt, but we were fond of it because it reminded us of the prairies we could remember from when we were children. 'This is my Nobel Prize for you,' I said as I handed her the bouquet. "She said 'You know I love these very much. They are so real, so genuine, like you and your loving gesture in giving them to me, Dear. They are so relaxed, like I wish I could be more often. Like so much of what you do, Love, I do not know what I am going to do with them, but I will find something. And, by the way, having you with me is prize enough.' "There were a few occasions during our time together when we just became overwhelmed. How to explain them I do not know. This was one of them. "Just inside the campus, the way we walked that morning, there were - in fact there still are - some stone benches. We knew we had to sit down someplace. So we sat there, our arms lightly around each other's wastes, and we looked at each other with tears streaming down. "Just then Mike, our friend and her colleague, came by on his bicycle. He looked at us, stopped, and with the very most concerned look he could make, asked if we were okay. Both of us answered together 'Thanks. We've never been better.' "The world will think it is a joke, but the two of you will know whom the joke is on. "Now I need to find a few neutrinos." He did go off and I understand he did find a few. I never saw him again. One morning soon after he returned he died in his usual seat in the seminar room, holding a bunch of dandelions. He always worried about what would happen to her after he would die. It seemed so utterly improbable to him that she would die before he that he never really thought much about how he would carry on if that happened. He told me a few times that her passing gave him a profound understanding that there is a flaw in the Theory of Impossibility. After she died, he carried on as well as he could for an old man, a professor emeritus, in his life at the university. He continued some research and teaching. He went hunting, perhaps more frequently than he had, for neutrinos. During these hunts, he would need to remain in a cave for at least a month and sometimes as many as three. He would go to the seminar room twice a year, like he did when he still had her to pour coffee for, sit in the same chair in the back of the room where he always sat, and stare smiling at the front of the room for about an hour. He would always call the department's secretary in advance of these visits, to be sure nothing would be going on in the room when he planned to be there. Unknown to him, prompted by his call, a faculty member from the department would be posted outside the room after he went in to make sure nobody would interfere with his time there, which everyone understood was time with her. So when he would come out of the room, lo and behold, he would find a faculty member! This was always a great surprise for him. He would chat for awhile, find out what was going on in the department and with the faculty member, share some wisdom, and walk home obviously somewhat happier. It was like each of those visits would give him whatever he needed to carry on for another few months. Oh, he had his dear friends, like Mike and I, and they helped him in his daily routines and, most importantly to him, helped him cope with the fact that half of him - he used to say much more than that - was not around any longer. "If it weren't for great people like Mike and his beautiful partner, I would always make three times as much coffee as I need," he used to laugh. He knew, of course, that he would not walk out of the seminar room the last time he went there. He just wanted to be sure he would have a bouquet for her when, at last, he would be with her again. Copyright 2000. 000307 ... Quill First, having striven to make at least the spelling in that piece entirely correct, i just noticed a grievous error, but not in spelling. the word "wastes" should be "waists". Also, blather itself is behaving very wierdly. It cut out a couple of paragraphs from the story when it was posted. I will try to post it again all of it. However, if you want to be sure that you have the complete version, please just send me an e-mail requesting a copy and I will e-mail one to you. 000307 ... Quill (Retry.) Improbabilities I remember his telling the story to me one day before he set off to spend a month in a cave waiting to find three neutrinos, if he were lucky. He knew I was considering a long term relationship with a woman I'd fallen in love with and wanted to know more about what he had seen in this woman in his life. This woman, whom he "appreciated very deeply from before I first set eyes on her and even before I had confirmation she existed," as he always told me with a smile and an extraordinary pause followed by a slight shrug of the shoulders. "I attended her departmental seminar, as I always did. She would give two of them each year after she won the big award. Usually I knew in considerable detail what she was going to say, because we would have worked on her presentation together, like we also did on all of mine. "Mind you, my expertise was in a different field altogether. But we learned after a few years of 'struggle' - and I wish such struggles on all lovers - how to read each other's papers and grant applications and, yes, minds. "Still, this time, in the two days before her talk, I had great difficulty connecting with her. She was in some sort of frenzy over something. We usually got up in the morning at the same time, but she barely slept those days and always got up in the wee hours. All I knew was that she had decided to change the topic of the talk from the one we had been working on for the previous weeks. "'I'm on to something,' she told me. I knew from the few times she had told me this before in similar frenzies that the best I could do for her was keep her cup filled with coffee from beans I had freshly ground. "'Remember, Dear, half and half in every other cup,' she always reminded me. So I could always remind her that my mind was not at her level but I did have one. Then she would always shoot back 'I know, Love, I am so glad our minds are so mixed up.' I guess every relationship needs its routines. That was one of ours. "Also, she always said I made the best coffee she had ever enjoyed. Why that meant so much to me I still do not know, but it did and she knew it did and so she never quit saying it. "So I walked with her to the campus in the morning, as we usually did when one or the other of us was not traveling or doing research under some mountain or something. Usually we would be gabbing up a storm, looking at weeds and flowers in little patches along the way, greeting people who would also be out. We liked best chatting with younger students, because of all the life and energy and interest in the world and learning about it that they had. Besides we felt it helped keep us young, not that she needed that. Yes, we also would comment to one another about the latest astronomical or political events, discuss what poems or stories we were next going to read with each other, what plays or concerts we would like to attend, whether we were going to do the Seattle to LA bike trip in the coming year. Things like that. "This day, it was silence. A silence dripping with respect and love and, on my part, intense anticipation for what I would be part of that evening. I understood she was still working things out, she was not relaxed, she was still nervous, she was not yet able to savor the intense release and satisfaction that would come later, even though she knew it would as much as I did. "So we reached the door of her department and I just took her hand and kissed it and said 'See you later, Love. I'll be in my usual place in the back.' "I didn't really want to leave her then. To watch and listen to her work was a fascinating thing for me. I cannot emphasize enough how startlingly brilliant and what an excellent teacher she was. I found that by observing her work I could learn a lot, not just about her subject, which obviously interested me, but also about how to be more insightful and a better teacher. Besides I think she liked me around some of the time, and I would do anything the laws of thermodynamics would allow to make her happy. "That day especially she needed that freshly brewed coffee from freshly ground beans. But I knew that more than anything she needed to be alone until I would see her again that evening. So I went off, perhaps more pensively than usual, to my own work. 'Whatever is she going to say tonight'? was on my mind all day long. "So the time arrived. I had greeted some of her colleagues and students and was now ensconced in my usual chair in the back of the seminar room. "Sheets with the abstract of her talk were handed out. They were still warm from having been photocopied just a few minutes before. Besides the usual biographical information, the abstract was one simple, powerful sentence: 'A flaw in the Theory of Impossibility has been found and will be discussed.' As people read the abstract, there was a buzz of excitement throughout the room. Our dear friend Mike, one of her colleagues in her department, looked back at me from where he was in the opposite corner of the room like maybe I knew something about what she was going to say. All I could do was shrug my shoulders. "But, God, I knew it was going to be good. Literally I was turned on. Full blast! "The seminar was of course complete dynamite. Overwhelming to everyone in the audience. None more than me, of course. Hey, I had nursed her through the genesis of this thing! It was a tour de force of intellectual power that one is very lucky to experience more than a few times. "I am not sure she ever really came completely down from that high. I am not sure I have to this day. "Starting later that evening, though, we were back in our own, very warm world. I remember the next morning, it was a Friday, I made a point of picking her a bouquet of dandelions from the edge of a yard on our walk to school. This yard was somewhat unkempt, but we were fond of it because it reminded us of the prairies we could remember from when we were children. 'This is my Nobel Prize for you,' I said as I handed her the bouquet. "She said 'You know I love these very much. They are so real, so genuine, like you and your loving gesture in giving them to me, Dear. They are so relaxed, like I wish I could be more often. Like so much of what you do, Love, I do not know what I am going to do with them, but I will find something. And, by the way, having you with me is prize enough.' "There were a few occasions during our time together when we just became overwhelmed. How to explain them I do not know. This was one of them. "Just inside the campus, the way we walked that morning, there were - in fact there still are - some stone benches. We knew we had to sit down someplace. So we sat there, our arms lightly around each other's waists, and we looked at each other with tears streaming down. "Just then Mike, our friend and her colleague, came by on his bicycle. He looked at us, stopped, and with the very most concerned look he could make, asked if we were okay. Both of us answered together 'Thanks. We've never been better.' "Then we looked at each other, I felt this tremendous release from her, like she was being consumed by relaxation, and we burst into uproarious laughter that must have lasted five minutes, tears still gushing, the dandelion bouquet itself in a 'relaxed' state between our heads on a little shelf behind us. "What a sight we must have been! I know some of the students that we occasionally spoke with while walking to campus looked quite amused as they passed. If it weren't for Mike having been there, laughing his head off too, I am sure one of the students would have called emergency to get some psychiatrists out to help us. "I mean, really, older professors aren't supposed to sit embracing, laugh so hard they are crying, be relaxed, or be graced with a relaxed dandelion bouquet. It was weird, I suppose. "Yes, the whole thing was weird. So strange, so improbable that maybe it cannot happen again. I just hope that occasionally it does. "I hope this story has helped you understand a little. "If nothing else, do remember that there is a flaw in the Theory of Impossibility and dandelions are sometimes most suitable as love flowers. "And, oh yes, once in awhile, sit relaxed with your lover, look at her, and both of you laugh so hard that you cry. "The world will think it is a joke, but the two of you will know whom the joke is on. "Now I need to find a few neutrinos." He did go off and I understand he did find a few. I never saw him again. One morning soon after he returned he died in his usual seat in the seminar room, holding a bunch of dandelions. He always worried about what would happen to her after he would die. It seemed so utterly improbable to him that she would die before he that he never really thought much about how he would carry on if that happened. He told me a few times that her passing gave him a profound understanding that there is a flaw in the Theory of Impossibility. After she died, he carried on as well as he could for an old man, a professor emeritus, in his life at the university. He continued some research and teaching. He went hunting, perhaps more frequently than he had, for neutrinos. During these hunts, he would need to remain in a cave for at least a month and sometimes as many as three. He would go to the seminar room twice a year, like he did when he still had her to pour coffee for, sit in the same chair in the back of the room where he always sat, and stare smiling at the front of the room for about an hour. He would always call the department's secretary in advance of these visits, to be sure nothing would be going on in the room when he planned to be there. Unknown to him, prompted by his call, a faculty member from the department would be posted outside the room after he went in to make sure nobody would interfere with his time there, which everyone understood was time with her. So when he would come out of the room, lo and behold, he would find a faculty member! This was always a great surprise for him. He would chat for awhile, find out what was going on in the department and with the faculty member, share some wisdom, and walk home obviously somewhat happier. It was like each of those visits would give him whatever he needed to carry on for another few months. Oh, he had his dear friends, like Mike and me, and they helped him in his daily routines and, most importantly to him, helped him cope with the fact that half of him - he used to say much more than that - was not around any longer. "If it weren't for great people like Mike and his beautiful partner, I would always make three times as much coffee as I need," he used to laugh. We all knew he did have some trouble away from campus. Whenever I would see him, he would manage to remind me in passing that it was very hard for an old man to deal with weighty memories of such intensity as he had. Still he was basically a happy man, as he had been before she died. He was relaxed with himself. He did not think that he had disappointed her since she had passed on. He was always profoundly thankful, he said, for the utter improbabilities of having met her and then having had such a beautifully deep, all encompassing relationship with her. Every time you were with him, he managed to share some of the joy that he said he could never run out of, because she and having her in his life had given him so much. He knew, of course, that he would not walk out of the seminar room the last time he went there. He just wanted to be sure he would have a bouquet for her when, at last, he would be with her again. Copyright 2000 000307 ... Quill OK, the version immediately above is complete and has, as far as I can tell, only a single grammatical error. Hope you like it. Writing it has completely exhausted me. 000307 ... Joana. Your exhaustion was completely worth it, Quill. Thank you. :-) 000307 ... camille WoW! Loved it Quill. Beautifully written enjoyed the moments, the read , the write, the feeling behind it all. Thank you!Very touching. she still holds the bouquet he first brought her. 000307 ... mr freeman m'kay 010328 what's it to you? who go blather from