I started to write about how sad it was for Mileva Maric, Alberts first wife, but then I got bogged in my blog and could not express it right. My loyalty lies with Einstein, despite the dark story of his scientist first wife and her sadness. No, what I had started writing and what I ought to be writing did not jive. What then am I to muse on? The dull life I lead here in the Bronx leaves little to discuss. I wake, I eat a bagel, I drink coffee. I sew a bit, I check online things, I clean. It is of little import that I happen to live in a historical building complex. Good grief my english is deteriorating. Is it AN historical or A historical? I feel as though I should say AN but I am not sure why.
I live in a place of great history, though the tenants now do not reflect that. In the apartment below me, Marc Chagall stayed for a few months back in the 1940's. It was a building of Russian Jewish immigrants. They all moved here around the turn of the century (1900) and built this group of buildings together, and even had a library in it where they had poetry readings. It was one of the first Co-ops, and they had enthusiastically decided to become socialists or communists. Now it is a building mostly full of people from the Dominican Republic. The hallways smell like a Mexican restaurant. And although they seem like nice people, I wish it was still full of that intellectual group of Russian Jews. I was told they even had a theatre troup that met once a week on the roof, and a that the basement had a room for dancing.
I live in an historical setting, in a borough of New York City which has produced many famous people. And I myself am not your run of the mill person. Even so, I did not discover anything of merit. I gave no great contribution to the world. And whether or not one is supposed to get gloomy when reading a biography of a Great Human, I admit I cannot help but look at my own shoddy existence and wonder. Not that Albert was a human, I think he was a gift from beyond. Although I am sure his poor children could not have thought so, he seemed to be a lousy father at least as far as I have gotten in the book I am reading on his life. He reminds me at times in a not-good-way of my twins father; Indifferent, self absorbed, insisting the kids be sweet and loving to him despite the fact that he sees them once every few years. And in the way he gets enraged if they defend their mother. How he thinks spending 2 hours on the train to see them is too long a journey. And yet... he contributed hugely to the world. True, he was indirectly responsible for the horrific destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...neither of which is probably spelled right. And his close friends were all gung ho for world war one. And another friend was responsible for inventing the gas that killed men in the trenches and probably was connected to the gas in the gas chamber horrors. How ironic life is... Germany so anti semitic and.... well, this is not a blog about the horrors of the world, is it? It is about trying to understand science. Of course the religious right say that Mathematics is the devils toy. And I have always felt that the Alphabet was Gods. And isn't science somewhere in between those two, or am I just trying to connect in order to make order? The alphabet is after all communication, not nature itself, although the Aleph was originally an ox head, and each subsequent letter represented some form or other of matter itself. Shin was like teeth. Dalet a door through which poverty could enter. Blah blah, it is Sunday and a day of regressing for me. I keep wandering off the One-Cup path.
I took a long walk in the Bronx today, Usually I avoid walking here, it is rather depressing and grubby, but today it seemed damp and not too cold when I started out, so I decided to find a coffee shop. I walked 12 blocks until I came to one, and by then it was sleeting and windy. I sat inside and read Einstein his Life and his Universe while drinking a cappucchino, sorry that is spelled wrong- I read how his wife got sick, how his children waited to see him and how he canceled his trip to visit them at the last minute. I read how he claimed his wife was faking her illness. And then how he himself got very sick... (We never know when our own errors toward others will come back to teach us a lesson...) While I read I could hear everyone around me speaking Spanish and for a little while it felt as though I lived in another country. Usually I feel as though I am on another planet but today it was merely that I was on holiday in Barcelona or something. On the walk home, I thought about Albert. How his hair was all wild. How he was known to be so gentle that he refused to even play competitive games. How he tried to start a peace movement during world war one but only one person joined. How basically isolated he was, despite his many friends. In this way I pacified myself regarding his indifferent parenting, and I felt enormously connected to him again, even though he was one of Gods great geniuses and gave the world so much and I am a simpleton who merely watched it all through blurred vision.
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