Ode to Calculus

You are my salvation, and my greatest enemy.
You are my muse, in the sense that you inspire me to do other things.
You torture my brain daily with the flint you use to sharpen it.
You simultaneously make me feel smarter and dumber than I really am.
You are the foundation for reality yet seem to have nothing to do with it.
You are my lead weighted nun chucks, giving supreme confidence at times, but you are unafraid to beat the living shit out of me if I act like I know what’s up.

Who are you?

What kind of soulless beast would require I sledgehammer my skull to understand this?
It was bad enough making sense of numbers, then I’m taking the square root of letters, now I’m performing surgery in Greek and this is supposed to be math?

sigh.

You are here to rescue me from my lack of job skills, my stagnating brain, and my poor understanding of the toolbox of existence yet for some reason, a friend who wants to hang out, a tasty meal and a good nap always swoop in to try to rescue me from you.

Oh calculus, your puzzles make me delightfully suicidal, your logic fascinates the head I repeatedly slam against the desk, you make me say “HUH?” (I don’t understand) “OOOOH!” (I get it!) “UH!” (I found the answer!) “OH!” (It was wrong!)

You are robotic, emotionless, black and white, yet nothing brings out in me every color in the spectrum of the raw extremes of human emotion.

I remind myself with you that if all everyone ever did was make art, music, and dance, none of the problems of hunger, environmental degradation, poverty and un-sustainability in the world would ever get solved. Yet you are the biggest problem in my world.

I do realize that you are a beacon of hope that will help me achieve what I want to accomplish in life, and you may want to caress, fondle, and make love, but make no mistake. I will make you my BITCH!