"Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes, he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times, he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it.
Among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbours, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made up only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered."
The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Paolo Giordano
Once in a while, when reading, I come across something really poignant like this, some passage that is so steeped in melancholy, that truly tugs at my heart and makes me think really hard about the fundamental condition of my existence. These are the moments for which I've been reading all my life for, reading reading reading so voraciously, almost like I'm looking for something I'm not even quite sure of myself.
This passage in particular struck me, because I'd always believed myself a loner at heart. A prime number, in the words of Giordano. Sometimes, in spite of all the human contact and relationships I've built up around me like a warm, safe cocoon, I'm still invariably hit by a sense that I am, actually, in the truth of truths, deeply and unavoidably alone. Alone in the sense that all the relationships I have in the world will not make my departure from this earth an iota less lonesome.
I like the idea of two prime twins clutching on to each other tightly in the midst of the chaos of all other divisible numbers. I strongly identify with the concept of a prime number, feeling inexplicably indivisible by factors of the world. Nothing I do or say can be easily simplified into any one category, although very oftentime, I wish they would. I've always been a little bit of an oddball, having to either try too hard or not bother at all to fit in. Nothing I do ever comes easy to me, and I've envied too many people for the ease at which some things come naturally to them. Sports, for instance, and academic subjects. Personal style, music, public speaking, meeting new people and making friends. Even making sound financial decisions or being a salaried worker. The only thing that ever came to me as naturally as breathing was reading and writing, and even that has left me bitter because I'm unable to do that for a living, as much as I yearn to, because I'm not good enough. As much as writing comes easy to me, it comes even easier to thousands of other people.
I'm still struggling hard to find my place in this world, and I think I'm starting to feel a little fatigued.
All the plans I have feel like they're not going to happen, the obstacles I thought I would scale no matter what are starting to daunt me a little, beginning to feel insurmoutable.
I thought I'd relish finally being a grown up, with no one breathing down my neck to tell me if the choices I'd made were wrong. Back in my childhood home over a quiet Sunday morning, lying in my bed and curled up in my blankets, I thought to myself how much I missed being a child.
The child I was was fearless, optimistic, oblivious to loneliness as a condition, wrapped up and buoyed up in the hopes and dreams of my parents. The adult I am is deeply fearful of more than just things that go bump at night, more than periodically pessimistic, too aware of inexorable loneliness and primeness of my existence, dragged down by an increasingly warped society that enables the rich to get obscenely richer and just eats away at hope, heaping on more and more burdens to my already stooped mind.
Picture credits: http://www.pxleyes.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/solitude/72.jpg
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