Knot Theory
Hi and thanks for subscribing to my newsletter! The breakdown is as follows: a personal essay on top of the message and some more concrete life updates, current media favorites and a recipe at its bottom so feel free to skip to whatever interests you. As this is an introductory letter, the personal part is somewhat emotional but please bear with me – it will be more cheery next week. Thanks!
KNOT THEORY*
One summer while I was in college and visiting my family, my mother** took me to see a bioenergy healer of some sort. I didn’t need healing but she needed company. Maybe she was just curious and wanted to share the experience. He worked out of the first floor of a family house and people sat around on an inhomogeneous assortment of chairs, in a room that could have been a living room, waiting to see him. I was uncomfortable and I was annoyed so I sat amongst the group that waited, many equally anxious and hopeful, and read a physics textbook in a foreign language. Griffiths’ Introduction to Electrodynamics, a black hardcover adorned with vector curls and gradients that made it look more arcane than the subject matter it was trying to convey.
I am not sure why it was not just my mother that was “examined” by the healer. This was her idea and I had only been a reluctant, likely unhelpful, plus one. Maybe it was because he had spotted my book and instead of being put off by my calculated scientific snobbery engaged me in conversation. (I told him there was nothing supernatural about quantum mechanics. It could definitely not explain his abilities.) Maybe it was because my mother did think I needed some sort of healing and employed some successful strategizing. (I told her many times I did not believe in anything even remotely supernatural.) But the healer did “examine” me.
I stood up and he slowly waved his hands around me and made comments. My mother sat close by and listened in. He seemed to know I had a bad back and allergies. He boldly stated that I had a small hole in my heart, which my mother confirmed. And then, as if that statement about my heart was a well choreographed segue, the comments become more emotional.
In a very matter-of-fact way the healer declared that I had a “knot of emotions” deep inside of me and that not working on disentangling it will lead to a bad future. As if we were in the first half of a bad coming-of-age movie he proceeded to suggest that I go to a deserted place of some sort, maybe a forest, and scream it out, try to unwind myself by physically expelling tension out of my body. With that act, I could be better.
In my native language there is a phrase that allows us to say a person is ‘in a cramp’. Like a period cramp but more existential. Like a contortion of your inner self. You would reserve this description for someone that seems uneasy at all times, always braced for impact, never quite relaxed, slightly scared of everything. It is more of a neutral statement than an expression of worry. I have always been cramped in one way or another. Maybe I was contorted around this knot.
I don’t remember any conversation my mother and I might have had during the ride home nor do I remember her session very well. If he talked about her psychological traits, I was so focused on actively disbelieving in his craft that I did not notice. I had come to his house to dismiss and disbelieve. I never tried screaming in a forest.
In retrospect, I almost wish that this had been an opening of my bad movie and “the first day of the rest of my life”, a magical wake up call that led me to reinvent myself as someone more relaxed and more personable. Like that trope of the geek girl taking off her glasses but for my psyche. That is as good as wishing to have been a completely different person. If I could go back to that many-chaired waiting/living room I would tell my past self to get off of her high horse and have some compassion for all the people there who were seeking help and comfort. I would at least shove a different book into her hands. And if I could tell her to consider relaxing a little, she would have hated me.
A lot happened since that summer. Inevitably, I did become a different person. A person that could un-cramp and un-knot at times. There have been many good moments, a collection of small victories over this inner knottiness – I danced in front of people once or twice, I wore crop tops, I asked questions in hard classes without always prefacing them with “I’m sorry”, I started working out in short shorts and doing exercise that make me look like a sweaty, flailing idiot even when the gym is really crowded. At the same time, the person I have become never quite learned how to execute anything like that recommended scream. I always worry that I talk too much, how much more annoying would it be if I also turned up the volume?
I still recoil slightly when I am told to relax and it might be that this, often well intentioned, comment will always feel like someone telling me what to do and who to be. Nevertheless, as I confront some semblance of adulthood, I am starting to realize that I always imagined I would grow up to be un-cramped, and un-knotted, maybe even easy going. I imagined this would happen spontaneously, through some natural mechanism of ageing. Growing up seems to have been more complex than that. There have been many long days when I have felt myself shrink and curl. For a few years the knot seemed to be growing and I kept bending around it. And even though my years in graduate school have been some of my most relaxed, the past semester turned out to be unexpectedly rough and as I could feel my inner self contorting more and more, I started worrying that this mental state has become akin to muscle memory and I will never be able to truly unwind and let go.
I am not ready to scream just yet but I am hoping to sublimate the benefits of it into some words you can see on a screen every once in a while. I have always been absolutely taken by fiction similar to magical realism where technology is substituted for magic so maybe it is appropriate to follow-up on a supernatural healer’s advice with something like a weekly email – an exercise in honesty, an excuse for self-examination, and an incentive to keep in touch as it is ultimately easier to relax in good company.
Thanks for listening.
Karmela
* Knot theory is a real branch of mathematics with some really elegant applications in quantum field theory.
**My mother is many things that I am not, she is open and unbounded in ways that I will probably never be, and though we sometimes disagree her willingness to look outside of the box is, in itself, commendable
***
ABOUT THIS WEEK
LEARNING: My game plan for the summer has been to try and tie up some of the many projects I have gotten involved in in the last year and so far this seems to be working moderately well. Currently, I am caught between editing a paper that is up for re-submission at a physics journal, polishing up another one that has not been submitted yet and starting a third with another student in my research group.
As scientists, we often downplay just how much story telling we have to do and trying to condense a year’s worth of work in a few pages really highlights that. Even though I have been involved in paper writing before, I have never been held responsible for both the content and the ‘packaging’ to this extent. This has really forced me to not only understand every detail of the physical arguments me and collaborators are trying to make but also find the most effective way to convey them within a coherent story. What am I writing about in these papers? Something like this, but in space, and with a quantum superfluid that is hollow in the middle instead of a water droplet. Experimentalists collaborating with my research group are hoping to perform experiments related to our work on the International Space Station later this year.
Since this quantum-space-bubble project is in the paper writing stage I have also been spending a lot of my equation crunching time on studying one-dimensional systems that can exhibit topological phases under some circumstances and attain multi-fractal wavefunctions in the presence of certain types of disorder. These projects (studying disorder and topology) sound like a mouthful but they are both intrinsically interesting from the point of view of fundamental research and related to another set of experimental efforts in cold atomic systems. Being able to study an experimentally accessible system is every theorists dream and I am no exception. Hopefully there will be much more to come related to this work.
(There are also superconducting nanowires in my life right now but unless you can teach me about phase slips I’d rather not talk about it yet.)
LISTENING: In keeping with the Internet magic theme, I loved the recent Radiolab episode about the creation of a new crypto-currency. While I have little to no interest in participating in any sort of a crypto-economy, this story was interesting in many ways, from the very technical (how do you avoid surveillance when all of our gadgets are connected) to the more abstract (how do you build trust in a virtual community). At some point in the story, the group that is being reported on resorts to using outdated 90s cameras and burning DVDs to physically prevent cyber-attacks on their venture and I am fascinated by this notion that obsolete technology can provides us with more of a piece of mind than the latest state of the art tech. It is not hard to imagine a dystopian future scenario within which some elect to live with landline phones and bulky CRT TVs to protect themselves from prying eyes of corporate interests and the government.
As an additional fun fact, the procedure at the center of this story, the one that is supposed to make it possible for this new crypto-currency to be secure and private in its use, comes down to generating sequences of numbers which reminded me that most secure protocols online essentially consist of a big computer somewhere out there trying to factor very large numbers into primes. This seems like a simple task but, for a computer, it takes a long enough time that past a certain point it can be treated as roughly un-crackable. That could all change if we ever managed to get a quantum computer up and running.
For more stories about magical oddness online you can check out this episode of Reply All (one of my favorite shows) about a mystical rat-training figure and viral videos, and for sci-fi safety concerns this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind (another favorite) imagines a world where our brains and limbs can be hacked.
On a completely unrelated note, this Bell Witch album is something on the edge of beautiful. It is not necessarily uplifting (it is a funeral doom metal band after all) or easy on the ears, but as a background for late-night work sessions I found it very enjoyable. It reminded me of a more doom-y version of Panopticon’s Autumn Eternal, which is another record that I enjoy.
READING: Since I have been in graduate school I have mostly been reading textbooks and academic papers, and if I did not travel so much I wonder whether I would ever actually manage to squeeze in a ‘real’ book of some sort. Accordingly, during my most recent trip back to Illinois I finished this horror story collection, after almost a year of carrying it in various cabin-approved luggage.
I am a fan of short stories in general and was curious about how successful one can be in executing ‘horror’ without jump-scares and in-your-face gore. Turns out one of the scariest things you can write about is the way people act in various crises, whether they are making Lovecraftian pacts to keep their little towns from ever changing or turning on each other once their easy survival is endangered. Not every story in this collection was stellar, but the better ones really made it abundantly clear that we should be practicing compassion towards one another instead of stockpiling supplies or building bunkers for the end of the world.
EATING: Since this has been a somewhat busy week I have mostly opted for leftovers or easy meals that consist of two steps: roast and assemble. These are no fuss; 30-minute meals and I will often try to just roast everything on the same baking sheet, which simplifies clean up as well. Additionally, oven roasting a vegetable when at a loss as to what to do with it is a big part of my cooking philosophy.
My favorite this week was this Mediterranean-inspired potato and eggplant dish with cucumber, chickpeas and a soy yogurt sauce.
Here is a sketch of that recipe, likely to feed two people (or one that is super-starving):
1 Russet potato
1 small eggplant
½ cucumber
1 cup cooked chickpeas (drained and rinsed if using canned)
1 tbsp olive oil + 2 tsp olive oil
¼ cup parsley, finely chopped (I prefer curly to flat leaf)
1 clove garlic, finely minced
¼ cup unsweetened yogurt (I used soy but if you eat dairy I would opt for Greek)
½ lemon
Salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, red pepper flakes
Preheat the oven to 400F (about 200C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
Prep the veggies: pat the chickpeas very dry and toss with a tablespoon of olive oil and salt; lay the eggplant on a cutting board with the long side down and cut it in half parallel to the board then score each half and brush them with one teaspoon of olive oil each, then season with salt and paprika, slightly rubbing it in; scrub the potato and cut it into small wedges, then toss them with the juice of about a quarter of a lemon and salt to taste
Arrange all on a baking sheet and bake on the middle rack. Check after 15 minutes,by this point the chickpeas should be slightly golden and the potatoes will have started to brown and get puffy. Stir the chickpeas and flip the potato wedges. Check after another 10 minutes, the chickpeas should be dry and crispy and at this point you can check the eggplant as well – it will be done once a fork pierces it effortlessly. If neither seems done, check again after another 5 minutes.
Once the chickpeas and the eggplant are done to your satisfaction remove them from the baking sheet, switch the oven to broil and give the potatoes a minute or two more. They should be easy to pierce with a fork and fairly crispy already.
Toss the chickpeas with a bit of cumin (and other spices you might like) and set aside
Make the sauce: in a small bowl whisk together yogurt, garlic, parsley, the juice of about a quarter of a lemon, a bit of salt, pepper and red pepper flakes (I added a bit of cumin as well) until smooth. Taste and adjust ratios accordingly.
Chop the cucumber in thick slices and dice each slice in 9 pieces
Assemble: arrange the eggplant and potatoes at the bottom of your bowl, then pour in the sauce and top with chickpeas and cucumber
Tip: Roast more than a cup of chickpeas (maybe even a whole can’s worth) and save the extras as a snack. With time, they become slightly more chewy than crispy but still make for a healthy, mildly addictive, snack full of plant protein.
Variations: Some roasted red peppers or black olives would likely be a nice addition here, and I imagine a quick-pickled red onion would be good as well. You could also swap the eggplant for a squash of some sort and use dill or mint instead of the parsley. You could also toss your potato wedges in some neutral tasting oil but I am somewhat partial to the oil-free texture.
I have also been on and off eating these coconut beans and greens (tip: you don’t have to use coconut oil or ghee, just any neutral tasting oil, but I would encourage using butter beans like I did because they are delicious), which is another fairly quick, fairly inexpensive meal that makes great leftovers.
MISC: I have been following this workout plan and since Week 1 felt pretty painful I did it twice. I was uncoordinated and my arms felt so weak. This week I finally graduated to Week 2 and it has felt much better.