Essay

So I read this amazing essay in English a while back and recently found it and wanted to share it with you.

I have of late been thinking about numbers quite a lot, the number one in particular. The abstract qualities of numbers fascinate me, and I've been trying to relate them to other abstract concepts, like wholeness and love and perfection.

For example, a glass- Glass A. If Glass A has a small chip in it, it isn't less than one glass. If it has a small lump on i, it isn't more than one glass. The glass is still one; it is one of itself. It is a perfect Glass A.

This inspires further thought. It is impossible ever to duplicate Glass A's. The ideal glass exists only in theory. How, then, can two things ever have enough in common to be called twos. Put two glassed together and all you have is two ones. The ideal two does not exist. There is no such things as the ideal two.

I found this concept very disturbing. The ramifications of the nonexistence of the number two would be extensive. How could there be true love without two? I asked friends, teachers; no one had the answer. Fortunately, I came across a solution to this problem just recently, in e.e. cummings's poem "if everying that happens can't be done." He sets up the idea of the individual one with lines like "there's nothing as something as one" and "one's everyanything." He then reveals that two ones are involved with each other- in love. He unites these ideas, wrapping it up beautifully in the last stanza:

we're anything brither than even the sun

(we're everything greater than books

might mean)

we're everanything more than

believe

(with a spin

leap

alive we're alive)

we're wonderful one times one

One times one! It makes so much sense. We don't generaylly think of multiplicationusing two objects. Usually we think, "One apple one time"-equals one apple. However, Punnett squares have shown that multiplying one horse by one donkey will yield one mule. Decidedly, different from either of the originals, it nevertheless combines characteristics of both into one being.

So it must be with people. The love of two individuals, while independent of one another, blends together to form one love-their love. People speak of "our love" or the "love between us" or the "love that we share." The two ones multiply to equal one, but that final one is different, seems richer, fuller than either of the originals.

The implications are intriguing. I had no idea that numbers could mean so much. It's a paradox, because mathermatics is the ultimately logical system, totally intolerant of interpretation. I think these ideas merrit further development-after all, I haven't even begun to think about zero.

-Jennifer L. Cooper