More Musings on Composition: Opposition (A.F.)

 

The question of whether the basic tenants of Composition as presented in our reading can apply to everything one does in life strains my brain each time I try to think about something else. “Everything” is such a word! It can swallow one whole! Yet, maybe I can jump into the vacuum for a minute or two to find out whether anything may pop out as an instruction to Future Me.

 

Despite trying to move on to our current assignment, the word came up this morning as I was finishing the sudoku puzzle I began in some early hour of the other night. I was trying to clear out some mental detritus remaining after yet another insufficient REM cycle, before I could properly write down my daily list of dreadful things I will surely fail to complete. The puzzle book is a simple level, called “sophomore” because quite frankly, my brain had fried out over the course of the last three years and this is all I can do anymore. At least, I can do it in pen and that is satisfying.  I was pondering the opposition of the numbers 3 and 7, and it got to me: can “things” (in abstraction) stand in opposition that can be used as boundaries or rules, if you will, in order to solve something else one is working on? The 9’s split the column on the opposing boxes but the middle one is a wild card; I’ll need both the opposing 3’s and 7’s to work into it. Not to mention the ignored 1 that stands lonely by itself in the top left corner box. 

 

Sudoku is not mathematics. But it may train one’s methodology, as a mechanical matter, for approaching certain problems or questions. “Some people like doing sudoku,” the man said as some great revelation in math seminar. I felt as his pejorative was met with quiet accolades of the group. I growled silent holes into my notebook. §I believe that my past eyes ran across David Bohm’s words quoting that “sudoku is not mathematics.” And I paid money for this.

 

But I sincerely wish to leave you, my good readers, with optimism at each temporary ending. I believe (yes, I can use thar word on special occasions!) that these tenants can be used in other endeavors such as whatever your art may be. Oppositions provides us with a sense not only of spatial or visual relationship but of an incipient structure for thought. In so, it is not thought itself, but a materialization of the aspects therein.

 

I hope I passed the audition.

 

 

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