Parents—so essential yet sometimes like something you have stepped in and cannot get off your shoe. What else… — Jeffrey Ford

Halloween was close, our favorite holiday because it carried none of the pain-in-the-ass holiness of Christmas and still there was free candy.

Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me.

My hero was J. S. Bach. It was from his works that I came to understand mathematics and, through a greater understanding of math, came to a greater understanding of Bach—the golden ratio, the rise of complexity through the reiteration of simple elements, the presence of the cosmic in the common.