Eighteen wheeler — IV. Dice

And who that ever dabbled in mathematics did not wake up late some night
in panic that their entire construct is off by a factor of two
until sunlight and coffee soothed their strained axioms?
Maybe
    Banach and Tarski
had just such a late night bender
and we have yet to snap out of the mesmerism of their identical balls.
(And maybe this was just a single entendre to start with.)
After all, isn’t the axiom of choice just the insistence to play a shell game,
even if with infinitely many cups?

The obsession to see patterns makes fools even of the wise, like
    Dirac and Eddington
who sought the beauty of integers in the
    fine structure
of things—and when none came forth,
got lost chasing some occult arithmancy in their later lives.
But why stop at imagining that a constant is an integer
instead of a dreamland where integers themselves are malleable.
Imagining a god that won’t throw dice
is not much improvement over imagining one that will.
And neither goes as far as imagining none at all.
Just the dice,
    in such myriad sides and shapes and colors
    as to give envy to the most avid collector.
A game with no dungeon master is much more interesting
than one where they never show up to clarify the rules.

It seems reality is vexing
even to the pioneers that chart its topographies,
be it with paper-and-pencil or computer or particle accelerator.
Yet reality is still the only place where everyone goes to dance.
The imagined touch is hollow
    compared to the panic of fingertips at your neck.
The imagined breath may still break your heart in its absence,
    but only because you have experienced it once upon your actual skin.
We are addicted to reality, though most try to quit it periodically
—and those of us that don’t are The Beautiful Mad
who embrace every heartbreak and every loss,
Don Quixotes against the windmills of our own mortality,
preferring the honesty of our cosmic solitude
over humming loudly in fear
until one’s ringing skull begins to imagine lights in the darkness.

Yes, the Light is there,
but not where you imagined it.
And it does not need you to be special.
It does not need you at all.
You should be grateful that it doesn’t.
It will still be bright after you.

Melih Sener

“Eighteen Wheeler” consists of five parts:
1. Eighteen wheeler — I. Innumeracy
2. Eighteen wheeler — II. Confabulation
3. Eighteen wheeler — III. Induction
4. Eighteen wheeler — IV. Dice
5. Eighteen wheeler — V. Oath
(… well, fine, and also something about carrots.)