Seawall90's Journals

The Days Ahead

I often look forward by looking back first. A habit that is not always endearing or useful, but a hard one to break. One of my oldest friends came for a quick visit, too short. And as is always the case with old friends, we talked about old times. Specifically college in Santa Barbara and those post-college slacker years of the early 90's. The overall feeling these days is one of finding our place. Of placing ourselves in the story of our lives. From talking with friends I am gathering the impression that no one is ever where they expected to be, if they were even together enough to have expectations. This is fine. This is beautiful even. It means where ever we go, there we are. I've been on many roads. I like to recall the numbers, as we name them on the west coast. The numbers are evocative. The 10. To me, this means Palms Springs, Joshua Tree, my hometown of Redlands, LA or Santa Monica. I've also taken that road all the way to the other side, ending in Florida, Jacksonville I believe is the other end. But more rich in memories and nostalgia, more filled with adventure and fun is the ever beautiful 101. It starts in LA but it was never LA for me. It's the space in the middle. It's all of California that is not LA or SF. It's the journey in between, though a significant source of traffic in both cities. As I think of it now a thousand stories well up. But they are for another time. For now, I just want to list the numbers I traveled on during my week in California last September. I've made a habit of being on the road in California in September recently. Anyone who knows these roads can piece together the journey with their own memories. But it went like this: SF heading south on the 101. 405-105-110-91 to end up at my cousins visiting with my dad. Next day, 91-105-405 to visit friends near UCLA. Then Sunset to Silverlake then to the 110 to Pasadena to crash with Suresh. The next day we head north: 210-118-126-101 with lunch in Santa Barbara. More 101-then 68-1 and a stop in Monterey/Carmel. Then 1 again to Santa Cruz and Todd's place. In the morning, the 1 to the 85-280-and into SF on the 1 again, stopping at Twin Peaks. Further north on the 101 with the Golden Gate and all that gorgeous Marin County. Cut over on the 116 to the 1 and it's such an amazing road. And I was in such an amazing place. On the way out, Mountain View Road to the 128 back to the 101. For good measure I took the 101 over the Bay Bridge and drove familiar roads in Berkeley. Ashby, Telegraph, College. As well as Broadway in Oakland. Which means the 580 back to the bridge. On the day I left, threw in the 35 on the way to the airport after shooting down the 1 to Pacifica to put my feet in the water. These are just numbers. These are just places. But in the days ahead, as in the days behind, I know these numbers will be significant and serve as landmarks. That whole 1600 mile week of driving through my past has served to propel me into my future. I relish the numbers. It's not the same on the East Coast for me. The New Jersey Turnpike just doesn't cut it, though it can be useful. And I have had some great trips and seen the leaves turn in the Fall from windy little roads in the Mohawk Valley. There are those names in the East, so strange on the tongue; Cobleskill, Schoharie, Poughkeepsie, Saugerites. But the wide open space of the West is where I began, so that fond bias will always remain. In europe, they tend to mix letters and numbers. I'm near the A11. It just doesn't quite get there for me, but I'm willing to give it a try. As soon as I get my wallet back with my license. I'm willing to give everything a try again. There is so much potential in the days ahead, soon I'll have no time to remember, but I won't forget; the numbers, the faces, the in-between places.

late September and the signs - I'm here now but where did I come from?

Sometimes I believe in fate. Like when I meet someone I feel I'd like to meet again, I most of the time don't make any effort to make sure that would happen. No phone numbers, etc. Just trusting that if I was meant to see them again somehow it will happen. I may pay slightly more attention to invitations from mutual friends or what not, but I generally don't go out of my way. Sometimes this works. Most times I never see that person again and move on no worse for wear. Sometimes fate is a bastard and says you can't get away that easy. Fate says, you will have to change your ways. About a year ago my mom said she had been asked to housesit and cat-sit at her good friend M&M's place in the french countryside. She said she wouldn't do it alone. I thought, what a great thing it would be to sit out in the country not paying rent, getting to know my mom again and we could both write, like we've been at each other to do since 1992. I said I'd come over and do it with her. She said she would ask M&M about that. The chain of events that led from that innocent conversation to me sitting here looking out the window at the surrounding little village with quaint tiled roofs and the 11th century chateau that is lit up all night by the proud townsfolk, squarely in the window above the desk, is probably not that interesting to you. I'd simply like to highlight some events that happened during the last frantic months of me taking this leap into unknown spaces, as if I was a recent college graduate with nothing better to do. These events I take as signs telling me to get over my old life and be prepared for whatever is to come. 1. August 18, 2008. My car was parked innocently on a Brooklyn street corner when an infamous Car service car ran a red light, hit a car then bounced into mine, caving in the driver side. The insurance racket of america took over at that point and totaled a perfectly good vehicle. One which had given me great pleasure but was going to be an issue in terms of care and money while I was away. Instead, I've been payed out, the stock market plunged and green energy is the wave of the future. I don't have to make payments or worry about expensive (and soon to be obsolete) fuel costs. I let go of the possession, in my mind, and found peace with the loss of something that was only "stuff" after all. 2. September 26, 2008. I went to a good friends wedding in California and reconnected with an array of folks who I used to know at a more innocent time in all our lives. It was beautiful. Made me think of what we had planned for ourselves and where we had ended up and confirmed for me that I've made the right choice in taking this break from ambition in NYC. 3. Lost my company issued Blackberry at the same wedding. Took it as a sign that I don't need to be in constant communication with the world. 4. October 5, 2008. Lost my wallet on a Paris street which I took as a sign that I was losing my mind since this happened once before in Williamsburg. No excuses, just fell out of pocket. And both times some kind soul found it and reached out to me to return it. In NYC a bike-riding hipster from Billyburg and in Paris, a hardworking Arab student. I let go of the idea of possessions again. I know I'm lucky. Lucky in the small things. Lucky I wasn't in my car when it was hit. Lucky two nice people gave me back my wallet. Lucky I didn't need that silly phone. Lucky that I have so many great friends. Forgiving friends. Lovely friends. I want to be lucky in the larger things too. Lucky like Jason and Kate. Lucky like anyone who has found peace of mind with their endevaours in life. I look around and I can't complain, I've had a good time in general, living. But I'm looking for the icing on the cake, as we all should. I'm looking at the signs and they're telling me the best days are still ahead. Don't try so hard to hold onto memories and things of the past. I'm agreeing with the signs and this is a major shift in my outlook. Proust had nothing on me in terms of nostalgia. But I'm ready to move forward. Have been for awhile I suppose, but now I can feel the actual motion. To be continued...

Seven Years later, the day after. Here's what I did and wrote that second night Sept 12, 2001

11pm I saw them burning Tuesday morning on my way to work. Going across the GWB as always. That was a shock. Then they closed all the bridges and there I was on the other side. Stuck. Crashed at a friend's parents house. Went back to work today. Came home tonight over the GWB as usual. No traffic, no tolls. Got my bike and thought I would ride down Broadway as far as they would let me. Reconnect with the City. All seemed normal through the blocks of Columbus. Then the 90's, 80's, 70's and all the Upper West Side. People sitting outside at restaraunts, normal, eating drinking talking. Then started to see a few more cops than usual on the corners. After 59th street every corner had cops. Through TImes Square with all its TV, lights and information. A mysterious bright point, suddenly, in this dark journey. Ended up on 7th Ave after the TImes Square Shuffle. Here is Madison Square Garden quiet at 8:13pm. Fewer and fewer cars on the road, more flashing lights. Had to turn left at 14th street roadblock. Then see tow trucks taking dust covered and smashed police cars uptown on 6th ave. Lots of flashing lights. Hang a right on 5th Ave heading south again and no one stops me. Washington Square Park and a Candle Light vigil. Many people. Many candles. Many tears. Through park and over to Broadway again. Stop in the street to adjust my music, Lucinda Williams, Essence. No one honks no one to honk. Down to Houston. No cars on the road easy riding. Put air in my tire at the gas station across from the Puck building (ed. note: gas station is now a chain store). Smell of burning permeates the City tonight, I noticed it when I first left my place on 122nd street. Forced to go left at Houston roadblock. Before turning north on Ave B I go into a store on the corner. cops everywhere. Ask one to watch my bike. He does not smile at the humor. I decide it wasn't really funny. apologize. No further south allowed unless you live there or have a good story. I got no story. Seems the city ends tonight at Houston. I stop at downtown Max, italian restaraunt, say hi to Luigi, who also works at the uptown Max that just opened on my corner. Now through alphabet city, though i have not heard anyone call it that in a while. Coffee on Tompkins Square. Over to 1st Ave on 13th street. East village has no cars on the street but quite a few people out and about. Up 1st Ave past the hospitals. All kinds of missing person flyers are starting to crowd the walls. Sad. Get diverted at 28th street so over to 3rd Ave and north again. Getting busy and crowded again. TV truck everywhere. Reporters in all the usual places, Times Square, Bellevue. Ride by the Empire State Building. Lonely giant now. Dark. Across 42nd street back to west side. See Times Square again. Cut up 44th and then across to 9th Ave. North again heading home. Lots of people out here even though there are no shows on. At 59th decide to call it all okay. I've seen enough The upper west side is totally the same. So I get on the subway. A train, next stop 125th street. Get off and immediately smell that smoky smell again. It is everywhere, even down in the tunnels. 125th and Harlem seem quiet. I stop at uptown Max and even though the kitchen is closed, Rosanna has them make me some pasta since I had told her I was hungry and had just got back into the city, which was true metaphorically. I told them not to but some people insist on just being nice. My trip was over. The city had re-entered my blood. Being away from it during this time had made me jittery. I know its alright now. Will be alright. So, maybe nothing bad has happened. Perhaps it was all a dream. Except, I could not see those buildings when I came across the bridge. The skyline was unbalanced, skewed like I am feeling now. On the TV, a bomb threat at Empire State Building, people running madly down street I had just ridden. Weird. Half an hour later, deemed a hoax. I am going to bed. Long day of work tomorrow. Giulani said we should all return to normal now if we lived above 14th street. Yesterday he said to take the day off. Its amazing how people listen to him! All is well except that its not. The city is shattered. Heidi is stuck in colorado. i'm alone. Time will work its weal We bruise but heal if for no other reason than to go on to see the other side of this madness arrive at the spot of of i don't know what. A moment of goodness? -------------- note: i couldn't finish this poem that night. now i have a few ideas. but they're not pure to that moment. it's tainted. by what followed. politically and personally. Heidi left me. Bush lied to all of us. (neither of those should have been surprising, and one of them wasn't) soldiers and civilians died. are dying. I'm alone still, but trying to believe still, in love. In redemption. In healing. In diplomacy. I know it's alright. That I'm alright. That we're all over it, except for the remembering. The question is, did we set the bone correctly before sewing things up and letting the scars take over. as a point of pride. See my scars. I have suffered, used as an accusation. when really, what we should be doing is quietly giving thanks that we're still alive to be trying to love. That we didn't give in to despair and hate and utter vindictiviness (well after a while anyway) and are now in a position to truly change; to change in our selves how we view the past and how that allows us to move forward gladly, and change in the politics that said it was okay to scar but not to heal. both are tenuous and will require intense work in the short term to bear fruit. but i tell ya, that's where i'm headed, the future. i'm nearly done with the past. at least the part i've been carrying on my back. some parts of the past has legs though. and the only thing to do with that bastard is to keep moving just a little ahead. "Yossarian!, what?Jump!"

My ORal History - September in New York 2001

Tuesday Sept 11, 10 AM I saw the World Trade Center towers this morning, such a clear blue morning, billowing smoke from a fractured top. my skin crawling. I went over the GWB even though the signs said it was closed. automatic pilot of my head said go to work. i am here and its green and peaceful and all i can think abut is the site of the twin towers, which I see twice daily coming and going over the bridge and that site is chilling. New York will never be the same. The buildings will not stand forever, though not many buildings in New York do, these two have been prematurely truncated. the inviolability of New York has been challenged. At the usually uncrowded Rockefeller lookout, a few miles north on the Palisades Parkway, people stunned, talking rumors. Cell phones going: "I won't make it to work today", "American Airlines", "767", "Pentagon", "WHite House", "bin laden", "this is war". i do not think i will be able to get back into the city tonight. perhaps someone out here will put me up. it's just scary. someone wanted us to feel vulnerable, at the whim of some other, and i suppose that is just the way we feel now. i wonder if it will solve anything. I can only imagine the violence being met with more violence, considering the state of the administration. but perhaps its too early to talk politics,. Its just instinct to want to strike back. I won't think about that. I am mourning now instead for the loss of a symbol. for the symbolic loss of our New York. The spires reaching unashamed to heights that mock the aspirations of so many, now brought down. to remind that there is still this battle, this conflict about freedom and who deserves it and in what form. The loss of innocence too. But this innocence was not naive, or pure or even simple. It was considered, and manipulative, and conceited. it drives the market and the world follows because there is money. Moral decisions of questionable merit greased by money. Politics. money. the root of all evil. or is it religious fervor to blame? So maybe mourning is not quite appropriate. but there sure is a sense of loss.

The philharmonic plays for the moon

Philharmonic in Prospect Park. Gorgeous sunset on the hurricaine clouds. Moon up on the other side. People sleeping on blankets. The nuns drink coca-cola. Next to me, she strokes her husband's back as he lays his head on her chest. They seem like love. All around little kids scream and run oblivious to joyful music. The world is for them. Fireflies and glowsticks take over from the pink now darkling clouds. i am here by accident, though it is merely steps from my abode, and i'm here alone, though there is contentment in that fact also. At times a big crowd is the perfect place to be alone.

Glory, shouts the odd man to my right. Allelujah. I thought he was yelling "boring". Imagine that.

There are things i miss sharing with you. Will miss sharing with you. I won't be able to watch you fall in love with someone who isn't me. But i'll always write to you. I love these moments of clarity.

Of the spectacle made just for my musings. A symphony in the park. A summer sky after the storm. The people.

And earlier today, at lunch the strangest thing, shared a table with a young woman since they wouldn't seat us alone at tables. She said lets sit together, i hate the barstools. We ate our grilled cheese and talked. She wants to go work in africa and then study for the LSAT. She's from Detroit. Hates her job and has been here less than a year. We were real with each other and in the end, it was a good lunch.

Life is strange and wonderful. But I'm cat-sitting and think i should go and walking away, the william tell overture and the sound of fireworks chase me into the
night.

Joanna Newsom at BAM with the Brooklyn Philharmonic - Jan 31, 2008

Ah, it was indeed a thing of beauty. Something truly worthwhile. At that moment, there was nowhere else I would have rather been. Certain phrases, her word order, word choice, sensibility of rhyme. I've been in love with this music for awhile now.

There are certain poems, songs, sayings, quotes that come to mind when we are sad or happy, things we say to ourselves or think to ourselves that give us courage or soothe our sorrows simply because we know itâ�™s a shared experience, since someone else has expressed it and we recognize it.

I think that is the function of art, to share the pain of a solitary human life. I mean, when things happen to us we often feel alone and that no one else can possibly understand. But if we take the time to talk with others, to commiserate as an act of healing, we find that there are similar emotions under almost everyone's surface. And while this may not help immediately, it gives one the perspective to know that "this too shall pass" and the courage to keep on living and moving forward.

It's slightly disconcerting to hear such things from someone so young, but as I think back I too remember feeling deeply at 22 , breaking up with my girlfriend of 4 years or at 26 learning that the australian had gotten married without letting me know, so why wouldn't this youth also have learned some wisdom, simply by interacting and loving others in her life? I too wrote broken-hearted poetry in my 20's! How could I forget or hold that against anyone?

I accept her poetry. It soars. It means something to me. When she sings "and we spoke up in turns till the silence crept over me", I know what she means, or at least what that phrase means to me.

As well as "enough of this terror we deserve to know light and grow ever more lighter and lighter, you would have seen me through but I could not undo that desire..."

And the topic of her musicianship, well it's obvious. There's nothing really to say except it's intricate, sustained, overwhelming, deep, exhibiting a thorough understanding of melody and rhythm and form and lyricism. The philharmonic gave such texture and layers to her already complex compositions. The songs themselves demand attention while at the same time their length and lack of traditional verse, verse, chorus, verse gives one time to think about what is actually going on in the song. There is time to think and savor what has just been sung and played, even as it all goes forward. The brain is doing two to three things at once processing, anticipating, interpreting as well as remembering. At times you feel this has gone on too long, but at the end you don't want it to stop.

Her voice, insanely unique.

Her long black dress worn with the orchestra in total contrast to the "how can you possibly wear that short of dress and sit at the harp" hot pink number for the second set was another stroke of genius.

"From the top of the flight of the wide white stairs, through the rest of my life, Do you wait for me there?"

The answer is yes.

There are people in the world who will inspire no matter their age.

Excerpt from an interview discussing the influences on her style:

I started going to this folk music campâ�”a really informal camp, more like a hippie gathering in the Mendocino redwoodsâ�”every summer, for six or so years, along with my mom. there were always these amazing musicians playing together, around the campfires, late into the night, or perched on some stump in the middle of the forest. that's where I got kind of obsessed with west African harp figuresâ�”these strange, rhythmically disjunctive, meditative little patterns, which totally changed the way I've written music ever since! they're really different from western music, to such an extent that I struggled just to wrap my head around them. like, in western music, things are broken down by meterâ�”you know, music will be notated in 4/4 (a four-beat-based rhythmic structure) or 3/4 (a three-beat-based rhythmic structure), etc.... but, in this west African harp stuff, the right hand plays in 3/4, and the left hand plays in 4/4 (though of course that's a western way of explaining it...the music isn't really thought of in those terms). this creates a sense of disorientation, with two rhythmically discordant and seemingly unrelated melodic lines playing at the same time...but then, every twelve beats, the two figures intersect, come back to the beginning. anyway, ever since then, I've found myself playing with new variations on the idea...for example, one of my songs uses a five-beat-based pattern in the right hand, and a three-beat-based pattern in the left hand, creating a figure that intersects and begins anew every fifteen beats. that folk music camp also got me really into all sorts of musical traditionsâ�”Venezuelan music, Celtic music, Andean music, Balinese music, Bulgarian polyphony, etcâ�”but most of all, Appalachian music. that was where I first sort of fell in love with the American folk sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcsBGR9uHmc

The Fires - I checked in with a friend

10-28-07

New York Phone Interview: San Diego

By: Sean Wallace

Lynette Smith of Jamul, California is holed up at her parents house in San Diego proper. Safe in the urban environment, while her husband, who happens to be a firefighter, sits vigil in their darkened yet still standing home. The pigs, cows, goats and other random animals kept by neighbors in this rural community are his to feed and monitor, as he was the only one able to get back to his home in this area during the enforced evacuations.

Lynette visits neighbors who have set up a temporary encampment in the parking lot of the nearest Target. The horses have been brought down, tents and trailers have been set up, and food is abundant. â�œI haven't eaten so much or well in a long timeâ�, she said of her visits to these sites. Still she feels lucky to have family in town and to be able to sleep in her childhood bed with her 4 year old son, a bit of comfort amidst the chaos.

All this is without the assistance of any official agency. The Red Cross set up at a local high school is similarly flush with food and good cheer. It seems that this fire has brought out the best in people. Even as it will be the worst of times for some, when they return to see if their life is in ashes, or merely covered in ashes.

-------------------

I grew up in Southern California. the Santa Anas are a fact of life. A weather phenomena of the Fall that is as melancholy as any New England leaf fall, in its own way. In my mind, they were an extension of a summer just past. A few slightly chilly days of Fall would be replaced by nights so warm you wore t-shirts and sat outside to feel the blow. Occasionally they would be so strong you had to escape inside from the grit. Once every few years, the drought and some off-road vehicle would result in big burn, which was then usually solved by a quenching rain that appeared from nowhere. These are my memories.

The dry stillness. The sudden beginnings of wind. The scent of smoke. The smell of hot asphalt cooling in the rain that follows.

But now the winds are record setting. The humidity at an all time low. The fires as big as they get. Did we do this to ourselves. We live in dangerous environments and call it luxury or splendid isolation. We forget nature doesn't care about us.

But we need to care about nature, the same way you never turn your backs on the waves. The same way we shouldn't be experimenting with how much CO2 it takes to changes a planet's ability cool itself. The same way we shouldn't ignore another's need in a relationship. We need to always be aware of our effect on our surroundings. I'm seeing this more and more clearly for myself these days.

8 facts demanded by zaubermaus via mark

8 Facts

Here are the rules:

1) Only list 8 facts.
2) You must then list 8 TAGS at the end of the post. This means you must name 8 people on Buzznet who now must do the same blog.
3) Go comment on their profile and tell them to come read yours! Mark demands participation.

Facts

1- I have two passports. both expired at the moment.

2- My middle name is Maurice

3- I will never live in Atlanta

4- I find humour in almost anything

5- I am writing a novel that will never be published

6- I have never broken a bone, that i know of

7- I love living in New York City

8-I hate living in New York City

I tag anatolia, defever, yoko, athenspie, barney, otyler, paxgitmo and tomdog

Poetry Night - Just Read

A Poetry Study of Translation and Influence. Cavafy, Durrell and Cohen

"Alexandra Leaving"
Leonard Cohen
2001 from Ten New Songs

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
The god of love preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine.

Itâ�™s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust â�“
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,
Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.
Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.
Your first commitments tangible again.

And you who had the honor of her evening,
And by the honor had your own restored â�“
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;
Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked â�“
Do not choose a cowardâ�™s explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect.

And you who were bewildered by a meaning;
Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed â�“
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

The God Abandons Antony
As translated in Lawrence Durrellâ�™s Novel â�œJustine (1957):

When suddenly at darkest midnight heard,
The invisible company passing, the clear voices,
Ravishing music of invisible choirs-
Your fortunes having failed you now,
Hopes gone aground, a lifetime of desires
Turned into smoke. Ah! Do not agonize
At what is past deceiving
But like a man long since prepared
With courage say your last good-byes
To Alexandria as she is leaving.
Do not be tricked and never say
It was a dream or that your ear misled,
Leave cowards their entreaties and complaints,
Let all such useless hopes as these be shed,
And like a man long since prepared,
Deliberately, with pride, with resignation
Befitting you and worthy of such a city
Turn to the open window and look down
To drink past all deceiving
Your last black rapture from the mystical throng,
And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria leaving.

The god forsakes Antony
Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.

The poem refers to Plutarch's story that, when Antony was besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, he heard the sounds of instruments and voices, which made its way through the city, and then passed out; the god Bacchus (Dionysus), Antony's protector, was deserting him.
Ref:
http://users.hol.gr/~barbanis/cavafy/antony.html

Original Greek â�“ Cavafy was greek.
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Math is Life though don't quote me. Three page article and they still can't explain why it's important. I love it

Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery

Xianfeng David Gu and Shing-Tung Yau

Even topologists donâ�™t think this soap film can be made into a sphere.

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: August 15, 2006

Grisha Perelman, where are you?

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Xianfeng David Gu and Shing-Tung Yau

To a topologist, a rabbit is the same as a sphere. Neither has a hole. Longitude and latitude lines on the rabbit allow mathematicians to map it onto different forms while preserving information.

Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a k a Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the PoincarÃ© conjecture, about the nature of space.

After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Dr. Perelman disappeared back into the Russian woods in the spring of 2003, leaving the worldâ�™s mathematicians to pick up the pieces and decide if he was right.

Now they say they have finished his work, and the evidence is circulating among scholars in the form of three book-length papers with about 1,000 pages of dense mathematics and prose between them.

As a result there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought.

â�œItâ�™s really a great moment in mathematics,â� said Bruce Kleiner of Yale, who has spent the last three years helping to explicate Dr. Perelmanâ�™s work. â�œIt could have happened 100 years from now, or never.â�

In a speech at a conference in Beijing this summer, Shing-Tung Yau of Harvard said the understanding of three-dimensional space brought about by PoincarÃ©â�™s conjecture could be one of the major pillars of math in the 21st century.

Quoting PoincarÃ© himself, Dr.Yau said, â�œThought is only a flash in the middle of a long night, but the flash that means everything.â�

But at the moment of his putative triumph, Dr. Perelman is nowhere in sight. He is an odds-on favorite to win a Fields Medal, mathâ�™s version of the Nobel Prize, when the International Mathematics Union convenes in Madrid next Tuesday. But there is no indication whether he will show up.

Also left hanging, for now, is $1 million offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., for the first published proof of the conjecture, one of seven outstanding questions for which they offered a ransom back at the beginning of the millennium.

â�œItâ�™s very unusual in math that somebody announces a result this big and leaves it hanging,â� said John Morgan of Columbia, one of the scholars who has also been filling in the details of Dr. Perelmanâ�™s work.

Mathematicians have been waiting for this result for more than 100 years, ever since the French polymath Henri PoincarÃ© posed the problem in 1904. And they acknowledge that it may be another 100 years before its full implications for math and physics are understood. For now, they say, it is just beautiful, like art or a challenging new opera.

Dr. Morgan said the excitement came not from the final proof of the conjecture, which everybody felt was true, but the method, â�œfinding deep connections between what were unrelated fields of mathematics.â�

William Thurston of Cornell, the author of a deeper conjecture that includes PoincarÃ©â�™s and that is now apparently proved, said, â�œMath is really about the human mind, about how people can think effectively, and why curiosity is quite a good guide,â� explaining that curiosity is tied in some way with intuition.

â�œYou donâ�™t see what youâ�™re seeing until you see it,â� Dr. Thurston said, â�œbut when you do see it, it lets you see many other things.â�

Depending on who is talking, PoincarÃ©â�™s conjecture can sound either daunting or deceptively simple. It asserts that if any loop in a certain kind of three-dimensional space can be shrunk to a point without ripping or tearing either the loop or the space, the space is equivalent to a sphere.

The conjecture is fundamental to topology, the branch of math that deals with shapes, sometimes described as geometry without the details. To a topologist, a sphere, a cigar and a rabbitâ�™s head are all the same because they can be deformed into one another. Likewise, a coffee mug and a doughnut are also the same because each has one hole, but they are not equivalent to a sphere.

In effect, what PoincarÃ© suggested was that anything without holes has to be a sphere. The one qualification was that this â�œanythingâ� had to be what mathematicians call compact, or closed, meaning that it has a finite extent: no matter how far you strike out in one direction or another, you can get only so far away before you start coming back, the way you can never get more than 12,500 miles from home on the Earth.

In the case of two dimensions, like the surface of a sphere or a doughnut, it is easy to see what PoincarÃ© was talking about: imagine a rubber band stretched around an apple or a doughnut; on the apple, the rubber band can be shrunk without limit, but on the doughnut it is stopped by the hole.

With three dimensions, it is harder to discern the overall shape of something; we cannot see where the holes might be. â�œWe canâ�™t draw pictures of 3-D spaces,â� Dr. Morgan said, explaining that when we envision the surface of a sphere or an apple, we are really seeing a two-dimensional object embedded in three dimensions. Indeed, astronomers are still arguing about the overall shape of the universe, wondering if its topology resembles a sphere, a bagel or something even more complicated.

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Top, Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis; center, Bill Wingell for The New York Times; above, Allison Evans/Clay Mathematics Institute

THE MATHEMATICIANS Henri PoincarÃ©, top, posed his vexing problem in 1904. In 1986, William Thurston, center, of Cornell won a Fields Medal for expanding on it. Richard Hamilton, above, of Columbia invented a way to help solve it.

Dennis Overbye will answer select reader questions about this article. E-mail your questions to askscience@nytimes.com. Answers will be posted on nytimes.com/science later in the week.

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PoincarÃ©â�™s conjecture was subsequently generalized to any number of dimensions, but in fact the three-dimensional version has turned out to be the most difficult of all cases to prove. In 1960 Stephen Smale, now at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, proved that it is true in five or more dimensions and was awarded a Fields Medal. In 1983, Michael Freedman, now at Microsoft, proved that it is true in four dimensions and also won a Fields.

â�œYou get a Fields Medal for just getting close to this conjecture,â� Dr. Morgan said.

In the late 1970â�™s, Dr. Thurston extended PoincarÃ©â�™s conjecture, showing that it was only a special case of a more powerful and general conjecture about three-dimensional geometry, namely that any space can be decomposed into a few basic shapes.

Mathematicians had known since the time of Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, in the 19th century, that in two dimensions there are only three possible shapes: flat like a sheet of paper, closed like a sphere, or curved uniformly in two opposite directions like a saddle or the flare of a trumpet. Dr. Thurston suggested that eight different shapes could be used to make up any three-dimensional space.

â�œThurstonâ�™s conjecture almost leads to a list,â� Dr. Morgan said. â�œIf it is true,â� he added, â�œPoincarÃ©â�™s conjecture falls out immediately.â� Dr. Thurston won a Fields in 1986.

Topologists have developed an elaborate set of tools to study and dissect shapes, including imaginary cutting and pasting, which they refer to as â�œsurgery,â� but they were not getting anywhere for a long time.

In the early 1980â�™s Richard Hamilton of Columbia suggested a new technique, called the Ricci flow, borrowed from the kind of mathematics that underlies Einsteinâ�™s general theory of relativity and string theory, to investigate the shapes of spaces.

Dr. Hamiltonâ�™s technique makes use of the fact that for any kind of geometric space there is a formula called the metric, which determines the distance between any pair of nearby points. Applied mathematically to this metric, the Ricci flow acts like heat, flowing through the space in question, smoothing and straightening all its bumps and curves to reveal its essential shape, the way a hair dryer shrink-wraps plastic.

Dr. Hamilton succeeded in showing that certain generally round objects, like a head, would evolve into spheres under this process, but the fates of more complicated objects were problematic. As the Ricci flow progressed, kinks and neck pinches, places of infinite density known as singularities, could appear, pinch off and even shrink away. Topologists could cut them away, but there was no guarantee that new ones would not keep popping up forever.

â�œAll sorts of things can potentially happen in the Ricci flow,â� said Robert Greene, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nobody knew what to do with these things, so the result was a logjam.

It was Dr. Perelman who broke the logjam. He was able to show that the singularities were all friendly. They turned into spheres or tubes. Moreover, they did it in a finite time once the Ricci flow started. That meant topologists could, in their fashion, cut them off, and allow the Ricci process to continue to its end, revealing the topologically spherical essence of the space in question, and thus proving the conjectures of both PoincarÃ© and Thurston.

Dr. Perelmanâ�™s first paper, promising â�œa sketch of an eclectic proof,â� came as a bolt from the blue when it was posted on the Internet in November 2002. â�œNobody knew he was working on the PoincarÃ© conjecture,â� said Michael T. Anderson of the State University of New York in Stony Brook.

Dr. Perelman had already established himself as a master of differential geometry, the study of curves and surfaces, which is essential to, among other things, relativity and string theory. Born in St. Petersburg in 1966, he distinguished himself as a high school student by winning a gold medal with a perfect score in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1982. After getting a Ph.D. from St. Petersburg State, he joined the Steklov Institute of Mathematics at St. Petersburg.

In a series of postdoctoral fellowships in the United States in the early 1990â�™s, Dr. Perelman impressed his colleagues as â�œa kind of unworldly person,â� in the words of Dr. Greene of U.C.L.A. â�” friendly, but shy and not interested in material wealth.

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â�œHe looked like Rasputin, with long hair and fingernails,â� Dr. Greene said.

Asked about Dr. Perelmanâ�™s pleasures, Dr. Anderson said that he talked a lot about hiking in the woods near St. Petersburg looking for mushrooms.

Dr. Perelman returned to those woods, and the Steklov Institute, in 1995, spurning offers from Stanford and Princeton, among others. In 1996 he added to his legend by turning down a prize for young mathematicians from the European Mathematics Society.

Until his papers on PoincarÃ© started appearing, some friends thought Dr. Perelman had left mathematics. Although they were so technical and abbreviated that few mathematicians could read them, they quickly attracted interest among experts. In the spring of 2003, Dr. Perelman came back to the United States to give a series of lectures at Stony Brook and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also spoke at Columbia, New York University and Princeton.

But once he was back in St. Petersburg, he did not respond to further invitations. The e-mail gradually ceased.

â�œHe came once, he explained things, and that was it,â� Dr. Anderson said. â�œAnything else was superfluous.â�

Recently, Dr. Perelman is said to have resigned from Steklov. E-mail messages addressed to him and to the Steklov Institute went unanswered.

In his absence, others have taken the lead in trying to verify and disseminate his work. Dr. Kleiner of Yale and John Lott of the University of Michigan have assembled a monograph annotating and explicating Dr. Perelmanâ�™s proof of the two conjectures..

Dr. Morgan of Columbia and Gang Tian of Princeton have followed Dr. Perelmanâ�™s prescription to produce a more detailed 473-page step-by-step proof only of PoincarÃ©â�™s Conjecture. â�œPerelman did all the work,â� Dr. Morgan said. â�œThis is just explaining it.â�

Both works were supported by the Clay institute, which has posted them on its Web site, claymath.org. Meanwhile, Huai-Dong Cao of Lehigh University and Xi-Ping Zhu of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China, have published their own 318-page proof of both conjectures in The Asian Journal of Mathematics (www.ims.cuhk.edu.hk/).

Although these works were all hammered out in the midst of discussion and argument by experts, in workshops and lectures, they are about to receive even stricter scrutiny and perhaps crossfire. â�œCaution is appropriate,â� said Dr. Kleiner, because the PoincarÃ© conjecture is not just famous, but important.

James Carlson, president of the Clay Institute, said the appearance of these papers had started the clock ticking on a two-year waiting period mandated by the rules of the Clay Millennium Prize. After two years, he said, a committee will be appointed to recommend a winner or winners if it decides the proof has stood the test of time.

â�œThere is nothing in the rules to prevent Perelman from receiving all or part of the prize,â� Dr. Carlson said, saying that Dr. Perelman and Dr. Hamilton had obviously made the main contributions to the proof.

In a lecture at M.I.T. in 2003, Dr. Perelman described himself â�œin a wayâ� as Dr. Hamiltonâ�™s disciple, although they had never worked together. Dr. Hamilton, who got his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1966, is too old to win the Fields medal, which is given only up to the age of 40, but he is slated to give the major address about the PoincarÃ© conjecture in Madrid next week. He did not respond to requests for an interview.

Allowing that Dr. Perelman, should he win the Clay Prize, might refuse the honor, Dr. Carlson said the institute could decide instead to use award money to support Russian mathematicians, the Steklov Institute or even the Math Olympiad.

Dr. Anderson said that to some extent the new round of papers already represented a kind of peer review of Dr. Perelmanâ�™s work. â�œAll these together make the case pretty clear,â� he said. â�œThe community accepts the validity of his work. Itâ�™s commendable that the community has gotten together.â�

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