The czech professor of theoretical physics has a large cardboard mobile of the solar system hanging from his ceiling and an assortment of dice, colourful toys and other curios are scattered about the shelves alongside the books. Leaning back in his chair, rendering his czech mustard socks germanly visible, he inhales the theories, equations and leatherbound periodicals stacked on the bookcases, and breathes out stories; a colourful swirling chaotic mesh of them, interspersed with small gift-boxes of intense clarity. He switches between his three pairs of glasses according to the topic (it seems): a conversation of snowflakes whirling in impossible snowstorms.
In the same breath, and the same mesmerizing swirl of poetry and prose the professor spins tales of the everyday lives of well-known philosophers, the landscapes of his eastern-bloc childhood and resistance youth; of the personal histories of atoms and systems, the routes of travelling puppetters, and the world expands, wrenches apart, sifts through the cracks in the floor.
seventeen hours of conversation later my head is biscuit crumbed... days afterwards Ideas are still losing their capitalized status, but there are also other seed packets to open.
I think I have a new mentor.
***
On a related but mostly unrelated note:
Today, one of my students showed me a zoomed in picture of the sun. My first and only profound thought was: SPACE IS REALLY REALLY BIG and my stomach fell away inside of me. It's quite true: it is.
