T’is entirely thanks to Martha that i eventually learned to read and write. My illiteracy, prolonged into my early teens, had not especially concerned Calculus. What counted for him was that i could do just that – count.
The arguments that Calculus and Martha had over my education were beyond my understanding at the time. Only in hindsight have i been able to guess at their substance.
Martha thought life’s ineffable truths better expressed through fiction. Non-linguistic truth… to her… a total anathema. She said as much, giving Calculus and her something to vigorously disagree over. To answer any question regarding truth and beauty, he looks to mathematics.
– Stop playing at being Pythagoras, Martha will say.
– Can’t help myself. Perhaps I have his reincarnated soul. Somebody has to have it after all, why not me?
Their opposing educational beliefs, however, came to complement each other. Martha’s yin to Calculus’s yang. Meaning i received a good rounded education. So i like to think. Both believed that the state ‘under educates.’
In under a year, i went from illiterate to precocious. With her encouragement i was wrestling with Henry James’s clause congested prose before my fourteenth birthday. Martha introduced me to the Classics, ranging from Jane A. to Hunter S. In times past, she said, it was not unusual for young teenagers to attend university.
Calculus spends little time in Martha’s yurt. Non-fiction books, including those on his beloved Euclid, belong in another yurt which Calculus has adorned with Escher prints.
The ‘Escher yurt’ is bursting with facts and figures, containing as it does a substantial if incomplete collection of Guinness world records annuals. The records since 2018 accessible only to those with on line subscriptions Guinness. No way is he ever going to subscribe. Not that Calculus is short of reading/thinking material over which to get excited.
The library of his mathematical books is yet to lure in his grandson. Well, these things can’t be forced. When it comes to mathematics, i am not my grandfather’s grandson. Even mental arithmetic leaves me floundering.
What i have inherited from Calculus is a prominent nose, a swarthy complexion, and a strong libertarian streak. Life, liberty and pursuit of hippy happiness, something you can bet your bottom bitcoin on the Kommune giving its best shot at doing.