hello there, reader. it's been a small while. i've been holed up in my tower by the warm light of a conjuration, scratching away at my tomes. recently, i found myself in the company of a kindred spirit, and it has rekindled a sort of voracious appetite for hypercalculus (which, distressingly, i cannot find a proper name for. it's starting to boil up under my skin.. but i really can't just name it in mandarin, as i often would with such a powerful, reborn term). i thought, as a good aengineer, i might collect my musings in one place for your perusal! do with them what you will :-}

1) there's a thesis to be had in the following logical process; i wish i could explore it more deeply, but it might take a lifetime. the state of mathematics as of now is heavily impacted by foundational issues. this motivates the aspiring (or current, hopefully) instructor to seek an answer to these issues. however, with how radically students are steered (read. traumatized) into a particular vision of math, which is warped and twisted, a radical solution must be applied. i believe that mathematical worlds, which are as rich as a picture book or novel, with legitmate characters and renderings of them in separate form from their mathematical nametags, is a valid radical response. the key principle is that by so extremely reimagining the physicality of math (noticably WITHOUT undermining or cutting away the core mathematical logic and objects), students are offered a sort of "redemption" space. there is such a massive step away from the previous idea of math that it opens the door for students to believe it is almost a new practice, and we can begin to center expression, emotion, power, logic, all of the comforting attractiveness of math, without having to directly repair the initially injured mindset.

2) i have almost begun to think of myself as a healer or tea monk (re: robot and monk, great book) instead of simply a sherpa to a bright-eyed aengineer that shows up on my doorstep. so much of true mathematical education is about enrichment of the self, exploration of the brain, that it's become an inseperable ideal to me from the practice of seeding math knowledge. everyone i meet who engages with math or is currently in their math education is deeply wounded, sometimes bleeding out directly in front of me. if not, they've got gashed scars; of course, mine match theirs in mirrored echoes. it really doesn't have to be about carnage.

3) the work of a sherpa is not for the faint of heart. i have begun to think of knowledge transfer design as a kind of dungeon-mastering; you must build a world that even the least engaged player at the table wants to see the end of, shape entertwining stories into exciting highs and intimate lows, balance the tables and design the systems beforehand such that playing the game is exciting and difficult, but not so difficult or constrained that creativity is lost. a crack in this metaphor is that i think if i asked would-be teachers to DM, they would probably refuse. it's dirty, calloused work. but it makes beautiful things happen.

4) people are not so precious with words as i am. not in the sense that i'm better than anyone else (and i have become quite formal in these recent times.. i would like to believe i'm elegant, but no one can impose such an adjective on themselves, others must bestow it upon you), but that it seems to come of no issue to certain textbook writers that they use 3 or 4 words to describe an object interchangeably, and then those words have imprecise definitions. how do we not see this? how do you not feel it viscerally?

5) i really have no direct experience to back it up, but i feel more connected to the role of synesthete every day. in the pursuit of becoming a good knowledge keeper and transferer, i wish to connect with others who strive to do what i want to do. i would like to write my findings out, as i'm doing now, such that a person could feel inspired and pursue this kind of enriching, encompassing approach to sherpa-ing. but the more i think about it, the more i land on the "feeling of rightness". i do not exaggerate when i say that hypercalc makes me *feel* wrong (the name). it also happens to not consistently fit into the aesthetic i have curated for my mathetmatical world. but there is nothing inherently wrong with the name, only that it stands out like a single burr on a newly machined piece. that inherency, that physicality of the "wrongness", whether in artistic composition, or what i write right now (i do not edit, i write train of thought, and i am always very pleased with the result. i pause until i find the right word, and then i continue writing) does not have a name, nor can i teach it to anyone else. and i think it's connected to how i am able to cherish my mathematical world, 同伴，数学 + 工程 + 物理, and in general, my life. i don't live under the thumb of other people, i think for the pleasure of thinking and i am quite lucky to get to touch some nebulous stream that has a truly beautiful undercurrent for everything i do. i own a dowsing rod for my own consistency that i cannot lend to anyone else. i think if you don't posess that kind of strong internal pull, it's not an issue, you just have to think about things more. but perhaps if this was something that people held up as a worthwhile, useful metric for understanding of mathematics, maybe more people would experience this! i have no clue. it does completely define any time i invoke math though, which makes it difficult for me to discuss with other people.
(i do have a friend who has a wildly different personal world of mathematics and even across our extreme worlds of difference, we are able to converse semi-easily (sans vocabulary) about mathematical concepts. i think the two are interrelated, i'd like to believe)

i leave you with a warm smile and tired face. the exhaustion is part of the fun for me, as is with any journey i take part in. the landscape i'm crossing is wyld and awesome and magikal, but passing through villages leaves me with a melancholy taste on my lips. i wander as a ghost: at best, silent, at worst, frightened. i like the idea that i might meet another ghost one day.