Good Hours

Last Friday evening after my usual swim, I had dinner in the pool’s café while reading Jürgen Neffe’s recent Einstein biography1. When I got to the section on his father’s and uncle’s electric lighting business in Munich, I remembered that Oliver Sacks, my favorite non-fiction author, also had an uncle who made light bulbs and was instrumental in developing Sacks’ fascination with chemistry, and science in general.2 Earlier in the same chapter, Neffe describes certain aspects of Einstein’s personality that resemble Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism that does not affect learning ability, but is characterized by great problems in social interaction and relationships. Asperger patients may be highly intelligent and often have a penchant for science and technical things.3

Sacks’ collection of stories An Anthropologist on Mars3 includes the account of Temple Grandin, an associate professor at Colorado State University and perhaps the most accomplished and well-known adult with Asperger Syndrom in the world. Grandin is also a famous designer of humane livestock facilities. She has difficulty in social interaction, though. She sometimes gives the impression of a scientist from another world, who studies humanity and learns the expected social behavior, but performs it cognitively and functionally rather than spontaneously. She feels out of place wherever she goes, and was the one who described herself as being like “an anthropologist on Mars”. Einstein did not start speaking until he was 3, but then used full sentences almost right away. Along with his early obsession with scientific topics and problems with social interaction, this has led some to suspect he had Asperger Syndrome, but others disagree.

While people like Einstein and Grandin may have trouble expressing their feelings, that doesn’t mean they don’t have them. In fact, turning the prism inward can magnify and intensify emotion until it becomes a torturing flame. As van Gogh put it: “There are those who have a great fire in their souls, and no one comes to warm himself at it.” The double meaning of that quote has always fascinated me. Perhaps it reveals van Gogh’s great loneliness when no one seemed to want what he had to offer. I’m more convinced that he sensed how the fire in his soul was consuming him and could burn others as well. Thinking of this reminded me of Emily Dickenson and the often fiery emotions she expressed in her poetry. Rarely leaving the little world of her home and garden, she experienced life with the searing intensity of a magnifying glass held under the sun. Her poems on volcanoes are good examples:

VOLCANOES be in Sicily
And South America,
I judge from my geography.
Volcanoes nearer here,
A lava step, at any time,
Am I inclined to climb,
A crater I may contemplate,
Vesuvius at home.

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I have never seen "Volcanoes" --
But, when Travellers tell
How those old -- phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still --

Bear within -- appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men --

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place --

If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome --
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy "Pompeii"!
To the Hills return!

Is it this intensity that characterizes both the artist and the scientist? Einstein was a scientist, a musician (his violin was his most constant companion), and also wrote some light poetry. He loved Mozart’s music and shared some of his characteristics.1

Is there a connection between relativity and rhythm, mathematics and music? Pythagoras discovered that there is. He taught that „at its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature.”4 He held numbers to be the revelation of the unity and diversity of the cosmos, and saw this confirmed in his study of music, among other things. “Pythagoras noticed that vibrating strings produce harmonious tones when the ratios of the lengths of the strings are whole numbers, and that these ratios could be extended to other instruments. Pythagoras made remarkable contributions to the mathematical theory of music. He was a fine musician, playing the lyre, and he used music as a means to help those who were ill.”4 I once listened to a lecture on the Theory of Relativity in which the professor used Pythagoras’ famous theorem5 when explaining a graphic illustrating Einstein’s theory of time dilation6 (see below).

Follow the bouncing ball

In this scenario, the person with the ball is moving relative to the observer. Although the person bounces the ball straight up and down, the observer sees the ball move in a zigzag path. Both are correct in their observations.

Now, both the person with the ball and the observer are moving, but because they are traveling with the same velocity, they are not moving relative to one another—they are in the same frame of reference. Both see the ball going straight up and down.

- American Museum of Natural History

Sometimes I jokingly surmise that you can summarize time dilation with the old saying “The faster I go, the 'behinder' I get!” And I don’t even need to approach light speed to do it! ;-)

From Pythagorean triangles, my thoughts turned to the exquisite fractal symmetry and infinite diversity of snowflakes. I walked home that night through a world blanketed in white. One of my favorite Robert Frost poems is “Good Hours”, in which he writes:

I had for my winter evening walk
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

- Robert Frost

The poet is at peace with himself and the world, yet here again is the sense of one looking at humanity from the outside, seeming to have company but never really belonging. (I’ve often felt that way, too.) At first content to remain an outsider, he later ‘repents’ and comes back, only to find that his chance to connect with people has passed and he is now truly alone. Indeed, his very presence now seems a ‘profanation’, disturbing even the street on which he walks. It is really a sad poem, but I sense a touch of wry humor in it as well, and that’s one reason I like it.

I was also reminded of the magical, snowy world of Narnia before Aslan’s return brought the spring again. I do love winter, but I couldn’t imagine one lasting 100 years, without Christmas! On that walk home, I had such fun running through snowdrifts, walking in circles and zigzags, making footprints where none had been before and none would be after. I thought back to something I wrote when I was 15 or 16:

Now as I in snow lay down – singing snow – a thing no one can keep -dreaming snow – I sing its whiteness – its purity I celebrate

Snow falls – and rapturously melts – upon – my – face – and – hands
And tastes like sweet wine - upon – my – tongue
Soothing – filling me

With Snow-Song I am drunk

That is what I felt again last night. Playful and childlike, adventuresome and inquisitive as seldom before, yet with a wistful touch because I knew the moment would pass all too quickly. I pray that it will always live in me, so I can return to it in my mind when I need peace. That thought took me back to the Heart song “Dog and Butterfly”, which is one of my perennial favorites:

There I was with the old man
Stranded again so off I'd ran
A young world crashing around me
No possibilities of getting what I need
He looked at me and smiled
Said "No, no, no, no, no child.

See the dog and butterfly.
Up in the Air he like to fly."
Dog and butterfly
Below she had to try.
She roll back down
To the warm soft ground laughing
She don't know why, she don't know why
Dog and butterfly

Well I stumbled upon your secret place
Safe in the trees you had tears on your face
Wrestling with your desires frozen strangers
Stealing your fires. The message hit my mind
Only words that I could find

See the dog and butterfly
Up in the air he like to fly
Dog and butterfly
below she had to try
She roll back down to the warm soft ground
Laughing to the sky, up to the sky
Dog and butterfly

We're getting older the world's getting colder
For the life of me I don't know the reason why
Maybe it's livin' making us give in
Hearts rolling in taken back on the tide
We're balanced together ocean upon the sky

Another night in this strange town
Moonlight holding me light as down
Voice of confusion inside of me
Just begging to go back where I'm free
Feels like I'm through
Then the old man's words are true

See the dog and butterfly
Up in the air he like to fly
Dog and butterfly, below she had to try
She roll back down to the warm soft
Ground with a little tear in her eye
She had to try, she had to try
Dog and butterfly
yeah
Up in the air, he liked to fly
The dog and butterfly, below she had to try
She rolled back down to the warm soft ground
Laughing she don't know why
But she had to try she had to try
Dog and butterfly
- Heart

The song came out when I was 15, and it is one of the many that have put down roots in my heart.

I wish everyone could have times like I had that night. How fitting that I had just been swimming, and afterwards experienced an entire evening of “flow” like never before, exploring ideas and seeing connections that had never occurred to me until then. That evening was a great gift from the Lord!

Till next time!

- Renee

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Notes:
1. Jürgen Neffe, Einstein: Eine Biographie (German)
2. Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
3. Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars
4. See online article by: J.J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson
5. “In a right angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.” I don’t even pretend to understand geometry, but I found the connection between Pythagoras and Einstein very interesting.
6. If you are traveling at speed, your time slows down from the perspective of a stationary outside observer as you approach the speed of light. From your perspective, his time speeds up. However, if you both are traveling at the same speed, you’re in the same frame of reference and your times are synchronized.