4 feb

I went for a walk again. Walking is thinking, of course. And in my case, thinking is counting. At one point it struck me that we must have passed the half-way point of our trip? So I started counting again. September 15 days, October 31 days, and on and on. There were 233 days in total, an amount which I remembered then from earlier exercises. An uneven number, so difficult to divide in two. It is only because of this inconvenience that I realized I had been making a mistake. I should have counted 16 days for september, because only then I would be including the 15th, my birthday.
So there are 234 days in our trip. That sounded fabulous to me. Of course everybody knows The Jacksons song: B-C-D, easy as 2-3-4. For those of you who forgot here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tlZzkqfHw
But that is not what I was thinking. 23-4, the 23rd of April. It is the birthday of Claire. If you divide the time between me and Julie’s birthday, you arrive at Claire’s birthday. Wow, never realized that before.
I can not say how excited I get with this kind of information. There is so much beauty in numbers. Of course there is beauty in nature – saw some birds, finally figured out what a chestnut forest looked like – and there are nice people. But next to beauty, there is indisputable truth in numbers, At least in the numbers that I figured out today.
There was a broad smile on my face when I walked on. I had planned to visit Boschaud abbey, a Cistercian monastery, must have been late 12th-early 13th century, that has turned into a ruin.
A lovely place, with a great hill of stones in front of it from the ruined walls of the monastery. How fun it must be to try to rebuild this abbey. I was mesmerized by the windows. In fact, there were just open spaces, but to be able to look at the trees behind the windows was like seeing some very modern stained glass windows.
There might be beauty in numbers, the combination of culture and nature is also worthwhile.
Le Thoronet is my favourite abbey. Partly, I am afraid, because it is the ultimate mathematical defined design. There are perfect squares everywhere. When you visit the abbey, you don’t see those squares, of course, but you realize they are there because of the peacefulness perfectness – the lack of distraction of imperfectness – represents.
There we are. Nature might be beautiful, and a biologist (or just a sensitive soul) might understand why that beauty is perfect. But I am not one of those. I can see perfectness in culture, though, but I can really see perfectness in numbers. And I realize even more how deeply Julie, Claire and me are connected. There is no dispute possible. The numbers speak the truth.