psalm_onethirtyone: (There's the Answer if You're Clever [by)
[personal profile] psalm_onethirtyone
Trying to write and being distracted and kind of blocked produced this. It's bad Rosencrantz/Guildenstern from Guildenstern's point of view, and it proves that I have too many sciences and not enough English in my curriculum this year.

Dear Don John/Hero fic: Please start working so that I can stop writing things like this. Once you're done I get to work on my Shakespearean murder mystery novel. I'm begging you.

Look at it logically. No, I mean, look at it logically. Any way you like. You can use the Venn and Euler diagrams or you can use the Betweenness of Rays Theorem--either one will work if you twist them a little. You will twist them a little. I know you. I keep my Theorems and Postulates separate, but you're like a little child. I know you. You'll try to make them work within themselves. Should I draw you pictures? With what?

You make me act out of my nature. I don't like that. Every time you look down or look frightened or start to cry I do something uncharacteristic. People should be constants, not variables. You are. You have the same attributes for your personality. I know that when I do x, your reaction will be pi. Always. My variable will always result in your constant. You don't do that to me. In fact, your pi--your fear--always results in my--well, never mind. It isn't an x, because it's always the same--but it's like trying to get five out of two and two. That is a constant, by the way. When we talk about the impossible, we always use two and two is five.

When you behave in, say, x way--we're using a variable even though one doesn't belong, because all the other constants already mean something else; like K and mc--my reaction is always contrary to my nature. I want to--comfort you. That isn't mathematically correct, because I'm a logical and an unsentimental person. What I ought to do is tell you to stop being silly, or explain logically--logically, you see?--why you needn't be afraid or worried, and instead what I actually do is to become gentle and soothing, with absolutely no grasp on reason. It's ridiculous. More than that, it's untidy. When you divide xy by xy, the answer is always one, with nothing left over. I don't like it at all. You ought to take that into consideration.

Now look at you. You're doing it again. You're looking at me like that, like you want me to explain what xy stands for. It doesn't matter what xy stands for! As long as xy is divided by xy, it's always one, regardless of what either x or y stand for. No, they don't stand for my actions. I can't divide my actions, can I? No--no. Quiet. That's why they're called variables. They vary. They change, for God's sake!

And there's another thing that's not a constant. God. Every culture has a different God who reacts in a different way. God is infuriating, let me tell you. If He actually does exist, I'm going to have words with him someday. Take the Old Testament. One minute his reaction to x is y, and the next chapter the same action--x--gets a reaction of z, and then where are we? Mixed messages. Mixed messages are the curse of our mortal existence, you understand? We don't know what our deities really are. Benevolent or cruel? Who knows? Why don't we know? Because He can't make up his mind, that's why! Thou Shalt Not Kill, for example. If thou shalt not, why does God ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Where's the logic in that? Leaves us always second-guessing. Because of the very God in whose ways we're supposed to follow, we can never be sure of anything because He is so confoundedly inconstant that we necessarily are too, iff we follow his ways. And that, in case you wondered--which you don't, clearly, since you're too busy chasing butterflies--is why I don't believe in Him. My God is an absolute. Because of that, the iff doesn't apply to me. I don't follow His ways, so I'm quite capable of making myself absolute, too.

Or I would be, if it weren't for you.

What are you doing now? What's that thing supposed to be? You know what you're doing, don't you? Illustrating the law of mass conversation. Even if you change the shape of a piece of paper so that it takes up less space--it doesn't. It's taking up the same amount of space. It's taking it up in a different way. If, for example, we burn this piece of grass, we'll be left with some dust. But that dust is just as much matter as that piece of grass. Matter can't be created or destroyed. It can only be changed. I'll show you, all right? Give me your canteen. Good. Now, see, I'm mixing it with dirt, and you can see that there doesn't appear to be any water left. But there is. Notice how the mud doesn't fit into the hole we dug it out of--it's too big. Exactly. The dirt's mixed with the water and made a new substance, and since the substance has both of them in it, it's bigger. Do you understand?

...No, of course not. Never mind. No, I do not want to make mud pies. But we have illustrated a scientific law, at least. Those are logical too, by the way. They're constants. Not your mud pies, the scientific laws.

So are the laws of logic. Syllogisms, for example. You're a perfect syllogism. Dirt is a necessary ingredient in a mud pie--you've got mud pie all over your hands--therefore there is in some form dirt on your hands. It's perfect.

Here, let me draw you a Venn diagram, all right? We'll make one circle things with dirt in them, and one circle things that are on your hands, and--see where they cross each other? That little oval shape? That's 'mud pies'. Understand? I don't suppose you do.

Why do I put up with you? You're contrary to all my theories. Is it because you can't have one without the other, is that supposed to be it? Are you trying to pretend you're necessary? No water molecules without atoms of both oxygen and hydrogen, is that the idea? Or is supposed to be a maths problem? Or a Euler diagram? Or can I prove it false with an existential fallacy? Maybe it's a fallacy of distribution? Ambiguity? Of false sentence? Are you logical? Are you scientific? Are you mathematical? Are you omnipresent and above all these hard and fast and permanent rules? What is the idea?

Don't look at me like that. All right. I'm sorry. Come here. It's all right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout. Now come on, sit right here by me, and let's start over again, all right? Let's look at it logically...

(no subject)

Date: 2006-10-12 12:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] little-lady-d.livejournal.com
eee. ^__^ somehow i can't help but think of them both when they were very, very young, and guil must have been the boy who wanted to explain all he's learned and make it apply to something, while ros, ros would make mudpies and chase butterflies and want to see pictures drawn in the dirt.

(no subject)

Date: 2006-10-12 01:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rainbowjehan.livejournal.com
*squees* Guil had just been to sciences, and Ros was coming back from biology or something, where he'd been getting to look at frogs.

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