Maths
23°C, a glass of Piautre IPA in front of me in the TAM'S, the bar near my home. I've just been vaccinated for the fifth time against COVID (I had COVID a little over six months ago, being duly vaccinated, so I don't know if the vaccination really works, but I'm doing the booster anyway, you never know, maybe you catch the infection, but the vaccine mitigates the effects (in which case the vaccine isn't a vaccine but a prophylactic drug)). The weather is superb, and for the first time this year, it feels like spring. The river is as beautiful as ever under the sun and blue sky. The river's current is still strong, but the flood receding is well underway. A proliferation of fluffy ducklings shelter from the current behind trees still partially engulfed by the flood. Hidden in the tree branches, the ducklings are sheltered from the current and predators such as catfish, pike, carp and coyp. I've always sucked at maths, and now even more so, given that my last maths notions date back 48 years. As it happens, I regret it. Like any subject I know little or nothing about, mathematics attracts me. I think I had a psychological block to maths, because I wasn't stupid and I was pretty good in all other subjects. Tests taken in ninth grade even indicated that I should be good at math (the teachers couldn't believe it, and my father and I were called in for an interview with the principal, the guidance counselor and the homeroom teacher, only to be told that, against all the evidence in my school life, I had to be good at math, (actually, I think the tests had revealed that I had a logical mind, which is very different, it seems to me), (incidentally, a few years later, taking the army tests for military service, I got 19/20! which, among other things, gave me access to the reserve officers' school (EOR), fortunately I was discharged, (and that too in retrospect, but at the time I was very anti-militaristic and therefore extremely happy to be discharged, I regret it a little (although my tendency to be allergic to authority would probably have made me very unhappy, if not unfit for military life))). But back to the mathematics. I think I have to resign myself, at my age, to understanding nothing about it. Absolutely nothing at all. I admire people who understand something. I envy them for being able to read mathematical books with pleasure and grasping all the demonstrations. In my professional life, I've had to do some training in statistics (the basics, of course), and once I'd got past the first few notions, I was quickly lost, to the point of banging my head against the wall (without too much damage, though) and telling myself I was a complete moron (I was a bit harsh, admittedly).