Erol and Pearl
she addressed all diary entries to her soul, as if it resided not in her being, but elsewhere. she reported her life's happenings to it, and he could picture it only in comic strip format, her soul, lying on a beach, reading her daily reports as it sunbathed on the blissful shores of eternal paradise.
people were, he thought as he read her diary, perhaps more aware of their dependence on externalities back then, the effects of the variables on their internal life. Pearl sure could talk about the weather with fervor.
he saw in the diary an inheritance of meticulousness, love of numbers and detail, and inclusion of fact over reflection. Somehow these handwritten records were more personal to him than, he imagined, to her. They spoke to him of continuity, and gave him a sense that by being who he was he was carrying on a cycle of generational growth and understanding.
he had thrown many of the family photos, lost relatives and friends, away in the trash on Sunday, the plain old trash, not to be recycled or turned into compost or any other renewing endeavor. After all, there was no archival drop box for the memories of the deceased.
As per his parents instructions, he chucked the black and white grimaces away, but he couldn't bring himself to destroy Pearl's handwritten records.
Now he stared at Pearl's cranial CT scan, which had in recent years become iconic, and her rendered data spreadsheets, the chi-square charts, and some of the recent correlation charts that had been morphed for public consumption into pie charts and bar graphs more of colorful symbolic value than actual thesis.
he stared at them with the horror of one who watches their favorite book destroyed by Hollywood, and felt a chill. It was, for him, like seeing someone you once knew, once loved, glinting at you from the silver screen with melodramatic emptiness that angers you to your core.
It was, of course, something to do with a Depression Era childhood. Pearl knew a grasping, a holding on, she taught herself to order a chaotic existence, run by a ludicrous but important, almost sacred, agreement on the power of a green rectangular slice of paper.
And if there were such power in material, though it's value might fluctuate, there were constants to be had in such an existence. A keeping track, a counting, a useful and poignant accounting to be done.
He savored how Pearl could pursue the trivialities of daily life with such interest, as if she were figuring it all out piece by piece, and forming a philosophy of event outcomes.
Erol threw the magazine with Pearl's brain scan on the cover onto the floor of his studio apartment. He mused that when mathematics became poetic, it was the most beautiful conversion the brain could ponder. But the reverse was appalling. Reduction wasn't just a logical process, he could see that now.
He knew that he was wholly responsible for the transformation of his grandmother's archives from family heirloom to national sensation. He felt ashamed, like he'd been working left-handed, for the other side, for evil, all along and had not had the sense to realize it. some notion of honor he had stripped from himself.
people were, he thought as he read her diary, perhaps more aware of their dependence on externalities back then, the effects of the variables on their internal life. Pearl sure could talk about the weather with fervor.
he saw in the diary an inheritance of meticulousness, love of numbers and detail, and inclusion of fact over reflection. Somehow these handwritten records were more personal to him than, he imagined, to her. They spoke to him of continuity, and gave him a sense that by being who he was he was carrying on a cycle of generational growth and understanding.
he had thrown many of the family photos, lost relatives and friends, away in the trash on Sunday, the plain old trash, not to be recycled or turned into compost or any other renewing endeavor. After all, there was no archival drop box for the memories of the deceased.
As per his parents instructions, he chucked the black and white grimaces away, but he couldn't bring himself to destroy Pearl's handwritten records.
Now he stared at Pearl's cranial CT scan, which had in recent years become iconic, and her rendered data spreadsheets, the chi-square charts, and some of the recent correlation charts that had been morphed for public consumption into pie charts and bar graphs more of colorful symbolic value than actual thesis.
he stared at them with the horror of one who watches their favorite book destroyed by Hollywood, and felt a chill. It was, for him, like seeing someone you once knew, once loved, glinting at you from the silver screen with melodramatic emptiness that angers you to your core.
It was, of course, something to do with a Depression Era childhood. Pearl knew a grasping, a holding on, she taught herself to order a chaotic existence, run by a ludicrous but important, almost sacred, agreement on the power of a green rectangular slice of paper.
And if there were such power in material, though it's value might fluctuate, there were constants to be had in such an existence. A keeping track, a counting, a useful and poignant accounting to be done.
He savored how Pearl could pursue the trivialities of daily life with such interest, as if she were figuring it all out piece by piece, and forming a philosophy of event outcomes.
Erol threw the magazine with Pearl's brain scan on the cover onto the floor of his studio apartment. He mused that when mathematics became poetic, it was the most beautiful conversion the brain could ponder. But the reverse was appalling. Reduction wasn't just a logical process, he could see that now.
He knew that he was wholly responsible for the transformation of his grandmother's archives from family heirloom to national sensation. He felt ashamed, like he'd been working left-handed, for the other side, for evil, all along and had not had the sense to realize it. some notion of honor he had stripped from himself.
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