Proof and Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins and reliving the past

The recently-released movie Proof is not apt to be on anyone's list of great movies. Its title points to two realities in the film: a mathematical proof of a centuries-unsolved mystery about prime numbers and an almost legal proof of who authored the apparently airtight mathematical proof. The "great one," a U of Chicago mathematics professor played by Anthony Hopkins, has long ago lost his effectiveness due to an unspecified mental illness, and his twenty-something daughter, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, has given up her fledgling mathematical career to care for him during his final (3 year) illness. After his death a proof comes from one of the locked drawers of his desk, and Gwyneth maintains that the work was her's. Though her authorship of the proof is never precisely vindicated, we are led to believe that she produced this impressive proof while caring for her father. The film's frequent use of flashback and conflicting memory, and the sense that probing Paltrow's memory after Hopkins' death was the means of getting to the truth made me think about the issue of creativity and memory, and how we can relive the past even as the present and future are the context in which we must live our lives.

On Writing and Reliving of the Past

On this web site I have written more than 1400 essays. Many of them are generative essays, that is, they could be productive of several more pages of writing than given here. As I began to write essays I took great delight in spinning out my thoughts but wondered if I would "run out" of ideas as soon as I finsihed one essay. Thankfully, the well has not yet run dry. As I got to 100 or 200 or 300 essays, I began to think back of how long ago I would have had to start the site had I written one essay per day, then possibly four per week, then three, two and then one essay per week. I did it purely as a mental (mathematical) game at first. Though not a gifted mathematician, I calculate well, and have a need to have numbers on the mind. So, after I had written 400 essays (around October 10, 2004), I thought to myself, "Well, if I produced one per day, I would have started the site around September 10, 2003; had I put out four per week, I would have begun in early November 2002; if I wrote two per week, I would have begun the site late in 2000; and, had I written one per week, I would have begun the site early in 1998. I actually began writing sometime in February 2004, though I couldn't devote myself to the task religiously until after my teaching ended in Spring Semester, which was around April 17, 2004. So, being the numbers-oriented guy that I was, I tended to play these kind of mental games as I wrote more and more essays.

Then came a "breakthrough" of sorts. I began not simply to calculate when I would have had to begin this page for a once/week essay, but I also tried to "call up" that week or month or year in my mind after I had made the calculation. For example, after I completed essay 1000 on my birthday (May 15, 2005), I thought back around 19+ years and "walked through" my life during May of 1986. Since I am blessed with a good memory, I can usually recall the feelings I had at each time of my life and often can relive some of the activities that engaged me at the time.

So, the task of writing each day has been increasingly a time for me to relive the past. For each essay or set of two or three that I write, I plunge another week to three weeks back into my past. In so doing this, I try to peel away the meaning of those intervening weeks, much like one might take away the outer layerof an onion or potato. I remember the flush of joy I felt when I got back to February 1987 because I could celebrate the birth of my son, William, all over again. I recall the "gift" of several other dates from 1986 or 1985 or at my daughter's birth in May 1982. Some painful things were there and I tried to "rush" over the memories, but I couldn't do so, because that was where the calendar inexorably pointed me. I relived my termination from Reed College the week before Christmas 1987, my political loss in November 1986, some other losses in 1988.

Today's Joy

But today I had a most unusual and long-lasting feeling, a sense of immense possibility that overwhelmed me, a hope that was so vivid and a joy so full that I was buoyed by the memory all day and into the night. The film helped bring it out yet further because of its (rather superficial) setting at the U of Chicago. For, this essay that I am now writing is number 1464. If you count back 1464 weeks from today, you come to September 8, 1977. What is so significant about that day or that week that would work such a sense of fullness and gratitude in me? This week, 28 years ago, was the very week I began my Ph. D. work in the history of religions: early Christianity at Brown University in Providence, RI. I remember the palpable excitement of the first weeks of the program; the sense that I was embarking upon a field that I already knew to a degree but with which I would develop a most intimate acquaintance through a religion department that was committed to educating me broadly in the study of religion and the understanding of Judaism, as well as early Christianity. I felt as if I stood before great ornate doors that opened to me of their own accord, revealing a richness of jewels and glistening treasures that were mine for the taking. Secrets of the ancient world and all worlds, I believed, were beckoning to me so that they could whisper their very essence into my ears. And all I had to do was to be patient and skillful and to use my knowledge to listen to what the opportunity offered me. I felt like Keats' men on a peak in Darien, staring in open-mouthed amazement at the Pacific that lay before them. Nothing would be beyond my ability to understand.

I know that was my feeling in those days, and I know that complications over the years had made me lose that feeling. But today I recaptured it through the task of writing. I was taken back, through the work of mental imagination, and deposited in the seminar room at 59 George St, Providence RI during the week of September 8, 1977, and I reveled in it. I didn't want to return to "today." And I felt and feel very strongly that I need to be true to the vision that was imparted to me at that time. And so I write, and think, and write some more and try to lay out all that I know. That is what September 8, 1977 means to me after all these years.

1464