Angle of Truth

(A reflection on competition math.)

A monochrome world is a fair world.

This is what my father finally tells me after years of routine and expectations. He tells me there is no “maybe” or “if”s when only one correct answer exists. He tells me the graders cannot be swayed by a blur in their eyes or a ringing in their ears (or an ache in their heart) when the rules were rigid and inert; their judgment is faultless, doubtless. After all, an unisolated mind is a fickle one.

I nod. I drown in the shame welling inside my throat. I crumble into the frail resentment of my spine. But hope holds out, this weary yet naive clench in my chest — selflessly, selfishly, I keep my mouth shut.

.

If a monochrome world is a fair world, then what does that make me?

One correct answer. One desired outcome. As long as I set the gears in position, the machinery will rumble into motion. Beginning on a white page, draw a neat black diagram, then find the side lengths, then set up the equation. Step-by-step, the problem breaks down into its parts — a foundation of probability, a transformation in geometry, and then the finishing touches of algebra. Not so simple, since searching for the correct parts is a task in it itself, but it is something everyone could do with practice.

Practice, practice, practice. The omniscient, omnipotent solution is nowhere in sight, not on this white page with nothing on it. A blank slate, or an empty search? I try. Tables, lists, figures, variables, equations. It is a haphazard sprawl creasing across the paper, stumbling in the dark, around the increasingly claustrophobic scratchwork. If I keep going, if every aspect of this situation can be labeled, if all the information is derived, that will be enough for the conclusion.

This is a monochrome world, but is it still black and white when red — scathing, burning — is carved onto the sphere of the universe? The paper bleeds from the marks even as the print underneath remains unchanged, wounds cut by carelessness. They are terrible, simple errors. A messily written 6 interpreted as a 0. A final conversion, forgotten about. A variable whose inaccurate value distorted the next one, then the next.

I am wrong but not wronged. This is fair.

.

I want to reach for the roses, but cut myself on the thorns.

This is the garden I cannot save. Weeds, poison, and thorns. Tangled in the flowers. In the machinery that is supposed to be the mind. I know how it should look, so why do I keep repeating the same mistakes?

I know how it should look, but I do not know the garden’s beauty. What is beautiful about the most pristine simplicity? What is so shameful about the flaws? When the weeds are wandering thoughts. When the poison is knowledge in its richness and expanse. When the thorns are tears in perfection, a rejection of the monochrome and the gears, the soul that accompanies the mind, the proof of humanity.

This was never meant to be a garden, an exercise of cleaning and fixing. No, this is a field of wildflowers, vivid as impossibilities, stems reaching like the outstretched hands of imagination. And it is far more than the fields itself; it is the mountains, valleys, oceans. Bridges bind algebra and number theory, geometry and counting, taking husks and filling them anew. They are all one, blending, seeping, fusing. These are the solutions, the epiphanies, the roads that begin from everywhere at different tilts that still return to the same axis. I take the fragments of my knowledge and form it into something old, something new — sea glass, held at the angle of jagged peaks, and it becomes gold.

Red is just another color. It is anger, yes, but it is love. It persists in this world of varying balances and scales, in this world that is anything but monochrome.