Rules of Surfing, Part 2
Greetings occupants of the spaceship,
Behold the first week of a new year. Freshness. Today, January 2nd, is officially perihelion, the closest the Earth gets to the sun in a year. Didn't expect that on one of the shortest days of the year in the dead of winter... This is our theme.
Roger Penrose is a 92-year-old British physicist and mathematician who won a Nobel Prize in 2020 for affirming that the formation of a black hole is consistent with Einstein's theory of general relativity. He wrote a somewhat comprehensive book with Stephen Hawking entitled "The Nature of Space and Time", and more recently a book explaining how the laws of physics cannot explain human consciousness. In his immediate family are a physiologist, a geneticist, an artist, a chess grandmaster, and a computer scientist. In his free time, or what I suppose a polymath considers "free", he is fascinated with spatial relationships and corresponded with M.C. Escher in the early 70s, which inspired a whole range of the Dutch artist's visions on paper. In the news recently, and in the Instagram of a guy who hand makes one-of-a-kind soccer balls, are shapes called Penrose Tilings. Shapes that interlock to cover a plane completely can "tessellate;" the simplest example is to think of squares on a chess board. Escher did this often with birds and fish, guys and lizards. I did it years ago making salt and pepper shakers that I called "Mantas," which used the least amount of metal possible. Efficiency, ya know. Penrose came up with two distinct shapes that interlock precisely and tessellate perfectly AND never create a repeated pattern. Ever. This is the definition of "aperiodicity". These two shapes create an infinite number of the irregular.
So, things that never repeat. Waves. Ask any surfer. Never the same. How about the weather? Hmm. Dogs? Friends? Your children? Chefs are pretty good at making the same dish. And triangles, those can be the same. Molecules. Atoms. Same same. But humans? Days in your life? I have written these essays and sent them to you cool friends for ten years now, chatting about whales, ostriches, dragonflies, and catamounts, all combos of carbon atoms and other stuff but about as far apart as living things could possibly be. Oh yeah, octopuses, tardigrades and paraceratherium. Didn't expect any of those in your inbox.
That's the idea for this new year's missive -- what you don't expect is what happens non-stop. Sure, we all have our routines but 911, Chernobyl, the Wright brothers, the Hunga Tonga volcanic explosion in 2022 that was hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima blast, Ukraine, Nvidia, the light bulb, Covid, Taylor Swift, phenomena that no one is expecting. Good things, tragedies. Everyday. Triplets. Mozart showed up. The Sagrada Familia will be completed soon. The Mona Lisa smiles. D-day. Every moment is Penrose tiling. The same basic stuff, daybreak and nightfall, over and over and never repeating...
So, what's the plan? Book the trip. Paddle out. Damn the temperature, just go. Adventure and beauty are waiting for you, if you show up. I'm going to keep writing these words in this language, and I guarantee you can't predict what they will address. Take pride in swerving. Surprise your friends. Call someone you love and tell them. Buy art. Go to the concert. Camp. Sail. Sell the house. Live in a van. Ride a bike to Zihuatanejo. Get a new job. Be your own hero. Take a break. Just be sure that on the day the perfect wave rolls in you are out on your board ready for it. This ain't a rehearsal.
Happy New Year you sublime weirdos who read this. I love you. Be as big as you are. And embrace the unexpected; those bits are the things you will write about when you are ancient.
Peace and hugs, Maybe next time we can cover the Mobius strip. Maybe...
B mac
P.S. Naturally, the miracle of Roger Penrose's mathematical epiphany was upset by an amateur shape hacker named David Smith who discovered a single shape that tessellates perfectly and creates "a pattern that never repeats." (That phrase is in quotes since it's an oxymoron, but I found it throughout my homework). It's a bizarre, seemingly impossible, surprisingly simple hat shape dubbed the "Einstein," which is German for "one stone." It has 13 sides. Aperiodic my friends. The same and never the same. Also, turned into a soccer ball. Look that guy up.
P.P.S. For those of you with ears, check out Chris Botti, especially his live recordings, and the band, Sigur Ros. Not what you expect. Like the waves off Mavericks right now...
P.P.S.S. Rules? The rule is go get it. And you chose the it.
