I've been wanting to write something more poetic and freeform again for quite a while, and the last time I attempted this, I came up with "Different," which you don't need to read to get something out of this. But in my mind, I think of them as sister pieces.
I am horrible at math and science, so excuse my clumsy attempt to inhabit the mind of a left-brained genius. Let's just say there's a reason I will soon have a Ph.D. in Philosophy and currently hold a job marketing humanities textbooks...
In any universe, you are my dark star.
- Superposition, Young The Giant
In mathematics, aesthetic pleasure is derived from elegance.
When a proof arrives at its conclusion in a simple manner, without the need for laborious calculations or extra frills, it is called elegant.
Jimmy Neutron often uses the same metric to judge people. Well, one person anyways.
His neighbor—Cindy Vortex—is certainly blunt and to the point. She doesn't tolerate nonsense. She suffers no fools. She is the rare type who is every bit as much a doer as she is a dreamer. She molds the shape of her own reality, even when constantly confronted with natural limitations. What she wants, she gets.
Input: hard work.
Output: Success.
She is a beautiful thing, really; as mesmerizing as the fractals of the Mandelbrot set—and yet, just as lacking in practical value.
That doesn't mean she doesn't have value. He's just unsure what role she plays in his life. Or normatively speaking, what role she should play. What good does it do him to be in love with her? To think about her constantly? To unfold all the counterfactuals that might play out between them? She is a distraction.
Resting on his laurels will get him nowhere.
Ever since his move to Retroville all those years ago, he had effectively upstaged her for good. In one fell sweep, her title as smartest kid was gone, never to return.
—& this has become the seed of contention between them; the genius he was born with surpassing her daily toil.
She exerts herself to exhaustion trying to keep up with him, and sometimes, she's even afforded a glimpse at the throne she once occupied before she has to bow down to his intellect again.
But she does not take well to this coup of the mind, and refuses to kneel.
This is what attracts him most to her. That she is unwilling to give up, that she is always ready to rise to the challenge that he presents.
The fact is, not very many people bother. Why try and compete? No point.
But not her. The blonde spitfire has an unbreakable spirit, unexpected charm, an electric way about her.
That isn't to say he doesn't notice her rough edges.
She is the thorn in his side, the shrill harpy who can't ever be satisfied, covetous and striving as she is ruthless. At times, needlessly cruel.
She cracks the whip and there's almost a certain sadistic joy to be had in the bite and sting that follows. He has grown used to the barbs that spill out of his own mouth erecting invisible fences to prevent the tension from getting the better of them. Base biological impulse has, no doubt, been the downfall of many men before and after him.
The weight of want is an imposition that presses down on his chest. Which is why he has a hypothesis that this thing between them, whatever genus and species it is, cannot merely be physical. It's something else, something unexplainable.
It drives him mad. Stark, raving mad, really.
And sometimes he thinks the only cure would be a kiss from her lips, a declaration of some sort. But then he remembers, he's meant to hate her, this astounding, bigmouth rival of his, and he pulls back from whatever trance he's slipped into.
The insults are a failsafe. Last names, endearing and comfortable. Arguments, predictable.
But first names? Uncharted territory. The sort of chemistry that doesn't pre-suppose a lab? Frightening...and yet too alluring to ignore entirely.
He regrets that despite his prodigy, he cannot offer her the validation and care she so desperately seeks beneath all the bickering and bitterness.
He doesn't know how. And how pathetic is that? He has to wonder.
That a boy who grew up with loving parents and doting friends, struggles to express his feelings, his inner world.
The price of a brain like his is a searing loneliness; he has the intuition that others do not understand what it is like to be this way. To feel closer to numbers and elements than to people, to see the confines of normal life as largely expendable and unimportant, to constantly be called upon to save half the world from chaos of your own damn making.
The price of his imagination is seeing others hurt unintentionally by his hand, is his incessant need to play the hero, is his ego ballooning to incredible heights. The price he pays is not fitting in. He will always be light years ahead of those in his age group academically, and light years behind in a certain kind of social savvy that comes far more naturally to Cindy and those like her.
But he sees the cross she has to bear, too. He sees her self-doubt, her gnawing insecurity. He's heard the rumors about her parents, about the things that go on behind closed doors in that pink house across the street. He knows that his very existence is like a stone in the spokes of her life; a complication too heavy to pick apart.
With all this in mind, he can't help but admire her, no matter how much she berates him. Because she drives him to create, and he pushes her to be her very best. And they fit together like interlocking pieces of a puzzle, each compensating in spades for what the other does not have. She is talented and passionate, a veritable match for him in every way; her cutting emerald wit going head to head, breath for breath against his sensitive sapphire science.
He recalls that Richard Feynmann had once called Euler's equation the most remarkable of all formulas—"the jewel."
And at the end of the day, this is what Cindy is to him. The dark star of his universe, the smooth pearl lodged into the chambers of his heart, the most elegant woman he has ever known.