Encounters: EDEN miniatures, #9
By FREI
()
About this ebook
"I thought no more of or about it, until it occurred to me that this, probably, is what most of life is mostly about: chance encounters, and where we take them."
Encounters – recalled, not recorded; random, recollected, perhaps, rather than collected. No system, no method; no categories and no index: just a collation of living done amongst friends who have never really been strangers, who simply had not yet met...
EDEN miniatures are twelve texts from EDEN by FREI – a concept narrative in the here & now about the where, the wherefore and forever.
Related to Encounters
Titles in the series (12)
The Snowflake Collector: EDEN miniatures, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDimensions: EDEN miniatures, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart: EDEN miniatures, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ice King: EDEN miniatures, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Planet Walk: EDEN miniatures, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tape: EDEN miniatures, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEncounters: EDEN miniatures, #9 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSedartis: EDEN miniatures, #8 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIstanbul: EDEN miniatures, #7 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bournemouth & Boscombe Trilogy: EDEN miniatures, #10 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEuphoria: EDEN miniatures, #12 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInsomnia: EDEN miniatures, #11 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
Encounters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Particular Friendship: Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Wife's Duty: A Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tape Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Record of Nicholas Freydon An Autobiography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Sunday Best: 101 Curious Contemplations on Modern Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHamburg Diaries Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScavengers of Beauty: A Personal, Cultural and Symbolic Exploration of the Moon Landing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bagpipers: Historical Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tape: EDEN miniatures, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gates Ajar Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVagor Clam Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThanks for the Trouble Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghosts of Winter: Ghosts of Winter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Day of January Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Diary of a Man of Fifty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBats in the Larder: Memories of a 1970s Childhood by the Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDavid Copperfield Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not to Mention: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJourney 5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Upton Letters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Middle Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gates Ajar Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of My Life (The Complete Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova, Volume 4 of 12) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Sylvie and Bruno Stories: Illustrated Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo Sweden with love: Memories from the 1970s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLost Inside Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Two Together: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Biographies For You
A Moveable Feast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Writer's Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDon't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil and Harper Lee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Very Best of Maya Angelou: The Voice of Inspiration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Real Lolita: A Lost Girl, an Unthinkable Crime, and a Scandalous Masterpiece Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of a Bookseller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare: The World as Stage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writers and Their Notebooks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5James Baldwin: A Biography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932–1934 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Molly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5These Precious Days: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Encounters
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Encounters - FREI
Ponderage
There are, I come to realise, an infinite number of infinities.
When I put this to my young Mathematician Friend as a question, he interprets it mathematically and gives me an explanation I do not comprehend, but of which I have a faint feeling it appertains to something entirely different, though nonetheless relevant and important. Maybe I did not phrase my question well, and he did not understand it. Or very possibly he did fully understand the question and gave me a perfectly valid answer, but one that makes sense to his young mathematician mind more than it does to mine, which is twice as old and really not scientific at all.
I have enjoyed my young Mathematician Friend’s company, and I miss him and think of him often. He has a lovely smile, though it be slightly downward inclined, which makes him look just a tad sceptical when he smiles. Then again, he is a mathematician, so he has every right to be sceptical, and his smile is no less lovely for it.
I am fairly convinced that since there are more infinities than just one, there may well be several, and if there are several, there may well be many, and if there are many, then conceptually it strikes me as obvious that most likely there are an infinite number of infinites. Not being a mathematician, or at all scientifically minded, I only know of three infinities, two of which are of the same kind, and a third that is of an entirely different kind.
The reason I know that there are more infinities than just one is that there is the infinity of rational numbers, which perch on the unending line in the plus/minus direction where you can always add one more or take one more away. This means you in a sense already have two infinites, a positive and a negative one, but they are, in character, the same and should therefore probably be considered, if not one, then of one ilk.
But there are also the irrational numbers, which, like anchor points or switches on that line stretching from negative infinity into positive infinity, branch off into another direction, or even dimension, by leading into the unending sequence of never repeating numerals after the decimal point, which we can’t simply add to or take away from, but have to calculate, and which is therefore specific but unpredictable, but predictably unending.
So, simply looking at these two types of infinity, which are easy enough to understand though they may not be instantly recognisable, my hunch is chances are there are perhaps—I would venture quite probably, so probable as to seem certain—other infinities that may be even less easy to recognise, but that are nonetheless real, as real as these two (which could be looked on as three); and so, since there are an infinite number of numbers and an infinite number of ways we can configure these numbers to express an infinite number of things, there are likely, I like to think, to the level of this being probable, and in fact quite possibly so probable as to seem certain, not just two, or three or four, or one or two dozen, but an infinite number of infinities, not least because there are bound to be an infinite number of universes.
The thought that there are an infinite number of infinities to me is beautiful because I like the idea of infinities, but it is also tiring, because while I can imagine the one or two infinities that I’m already familiar with, I can barely conceive of any beyond that; and right now I wish I could have my young Mathematician Friend with me and curl up with him, just to feel his calm body in the presence of his beautiful mind and know that there is someone who may not see the world quite as I do, but who can handle abstraction and make something of it.
We spend some time together at the Science Museum, and on my terrace, and in my bed, and then he goes back to Austria, where he’s from; and I think, this is true: we actually met on a park bench in Kensington Gardens. It feels like we’ve known each other for years, but we really just met last Thursday by the Italian Fountain, when he asked me for a light, and we talked and exchanged numbers.
I lost sight, a little, of my young Mathematician Friend, after he left London, but he didn’t entirely escape from my mind, and so we met up again a few months later, this time in Vienna. That was a little strange, because now a few things had happened—none of them to do with me—that had troubled this beautiful mind of his, and while he was better again, in fact well, I now worried about him, and we talked about all manner of things, but not infinities. And then we spent a whole night together, first going out, drinking many pints of stout in an Irish pub, and then at a nice little hotel, and I thought no more of or about it, until it occurred to me that this, probably, is what most of life is mostly about: chance encounters, and where we take them, if anywhere at all.
We didn’t take our encounter much further, my Mathematician Friend and I, but that matters not; what matters is merely that we made ourselves some memories on a pin prick of an infinite number of possibilities, and for that alone I like him still.
Alignment
Here is how the universe aligned itself for it to happen that my young Science Communicator Friend and I could have a wonderful night, with Morcheeba:
I’d had every intention of going to the Highlands for a