First Leaf and Tolstoy's Fundamental Theorem of History

"Beautiful," said the LC customer as I set his latte on the bar.

"Sure is...You were talking about the coffee, right?"

"The whole process. It's a beautiful thing to watch."

I felt pleased. I recalled for an instant what it was like on the other side of the bar, to have no idea of the difference between a cappuccino, a latte, a macchiato, and so on. To be amazed at the gorgeous foam and the complex leaf designs. Oh wait, it's only been two months since I've started working at LC, and I still am very much amazed by the leaf design! I made my first baby leaf on a latte last Sunday, and it really was a beautiful thing. My hand was going for a heart, then at the last minute, it did the side-to-side dance as if possessed by a will of its own, and suddenly, a small baby leaf sat atop the brown like a tattoo, curving with the rim of the cup.

Today, I watched as my co-worker, Handlebars, created leaf after leaf after leaf, and each time I watched amazed and tried to figure out how he made it look so nice. His leaves are especially circular and wider at the base with many thin prongs. My latte milk was not so on today. It's all about getting the right milk-- not too foamy, not to wet. The design will come of its own accord, as they all have been telling me since the beginning.

I know I can't be serving coffee at LC forever (and why not?). I know I cannot be doing ballet at Symmetry forever (and why not??). But for now, let us appreciate and count our lucky stars that Angie gets to do both, day in and day out. Yesterday was the first day back at Symmetry after a week-long hiatus, and boy was it lovely! I had missed our teacher entirely too much. After the horrid, abyss-like Dark Age of Symmetry, whenever there is an extended hiatus at the studio lasting more than a couple days, it always starts to feel like a thing of the past, and that is a very melancholy feeling indeed.

Ultimately, life is a sad affair because everything good and nice will come to an end, and this summer has been especially good and nice (in fact, 2010 has been the hands-down the best summer I've ever lived in my 26 years). Pardon me if I sound depressing but sometimes these thoughts do occur in my otherwise obliviously blissful mind. I feel like Gilgamesh coming to terms with his mortality. Or like myself coming to terms with the fact that Prince Andrey and Natasha will not live happily ever after and grow old and curmudgeonly together. And Why Not???

Because Tolstoy says so, and he is the master of their fate, fictional as they are.

Tolstoy espouses an interesting view of fate, which goes something like...we are each of us free to make our own decisions, but once we do, our resulting fate is tied to the rest of mankind and history. Mathematically-- logically, it appears to make little to no sense. That is until one reaches page 937 of War & Peace:

"The progress of humanity, arising from an innumerable multitude of individual wills, is continuous in its motion...Only by assuming an infinitely small unit for observation--a differential of history--that is, the homogeneous tendencies of men, and arriving at the integral calculus (that is, taking the sum of those infinitesimal quantities), can we hope to arrive at the laws of history."

You see how hilarious this guy is? He applies complex laws of mathematics to discussions of fate! For all the ways in which he makes fun of Germans and their irrationally pig-headed faith in the sciences, he sure does enjoy using logic to pound his views home. Hey, Roomie, you see now why I burst out laughing when I read the above statement? It happens* to read very much like a typical math theorem from my old analysis textbook (I've added the bold fonts to emphasize the likeness). I laugh because I've finally discovered the reason for the existence of my math degree-- and it is to understand Russian literature. Thank you Tolstoy for giving purpose to my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics.

*coincidence? I think not! I'm sure Tolstoy did his research into actual calculus textbooks.