The work involved an intellect of spirit, but our teacher called it only love. Or nothing, as it mattered little what you called it, our teacher reminded, repeating: show your work. It was endless iterations of complex proofs, each for a simple truth. Only love. The thing about it was that its coordinates kept shifting in infinite directions, so as soon as you finished one proof, you could be sure that it no longer held because the prior constant was now something else. Go figure, the teacher told us, and meant it. Feel into weeping, carry the mess, survive the noise until arrival at some inner music. Same with smells and what is unbearable to look at. You couldn’t tell anyone what you were up to because as soon as you said the name, the meaning would vanish. It was no good explaining ourselves, so we learned not to. They called us idiots. But you can learn to nod at this kind of thing, laughing as you get back to work. No, it wasn’t satisfying, we might have corrected, if we had any inclination to answer certain questions. It was something else, that work. Always.
Constants
And figuring.