bridges of Königsberg
is this scary to you?
Wanna know what I’m doing right now? I’m walking through Bethnal Green.
It’s October 16th. I’m walking down the same road I took while preparing for the half-marathon back in spring. It’s all so similar. Of course, I smell much nicer today than I did on my long runs. There’s no rush to get back. Overall, a much more comfortable experience.
But it’s the same road and I’m the same girl, so I wouldn’t begrudge you for drawing any parallels, the smell notwithstanding.
As I’m walking (not running) I feel the world around me changing slowly and lazily. It doesn’t seem to be aware of any shift occuring within itself. Maybe I’m the only one that knows. But I do, I do know. By the time I get home it will have folded even more on itself. Yet it’s the same old world, still.
Maybe I should admit to you, at this point, that I’m lying.
Right-right now I’m sitting here, typing, at our dining table. It’s October, 18th, if you must know. Whenever this gets published, that’s the turnaround on my posts, so now you know (and now I know).
It’s October 18th, 2pm. The right-now me is wearing warm socks and a large men’s Paulie’s Burger Joint t-shirt. I’m not sure where either came from and both have seen better days, but this is what I like wearing at home. I smell just okay.
The baby is asleep on the couch. I try to breathe quietly and use the keyboard purposefully, without my usual boisterously thunderous fervour. I shh! at particularly loud thoughts and straitjacket any arising temptation to hum.
Apart from these modest restrictions this time is mine. To sit and write, or think, or listen to the same song over and over.
And today, on October 18th, during this time of mine, I go elsewhere. I travel back two days to October 16th, enjoy the warm weather and refuse to engage with the tiny part of my brain reserved for a continuously simmering concern about climate change.
I’m walking (not running or sitting at the table, typing) down Old Ford Road, past Victoria Park and past the row of fairy-tale houses where I secretly and hopelessly dream to live one day. I walk past the Yotel (a hotel owned by the YO! Company, the same company that owns Yo! Sushi. Disappointingly, the hotel is just a hotel and does not, I’m told, have a conveyer belt loaded chock-full of sushi going through every room at all times of day).
As I’m walking, I’m changing, too. Maybe despite myself, but I’m not oblivious. There aren’t any observers to the shifts occurring in my slow and lazy mind, though I’m here and I’m aware, so I guess I do count.
Running down Old Ford Road back in spring, back then, too, I was changing.
And sure enough today-today, on October 18th, I’m still changing.
☄. *. ⋆
Topology, put simply (I know no other way), is a branch of mathematics that studies shapes. No, not like that.
The actual appearance of the shape matters little to a topologist. Besides, of course, some very important and unbreakable laws. You can modify the shape any which way like soft dough but you cannot close or open any holes, tear the shape, glue it, or make it pass through itself.
The first thing you will see if you look into all this is this super duper funny joke that to a topologist, a cup is the same as a doughnut. (I want to call it a torus because it’s less of a threat to my diet. Mathematicians say doughnut to be more relatable, so I will respect that.)
You can collapse the main body of the cup onto itself and shape the handle into a doughnut. There is present, in a cup, every possible condition needed to create a donut without breaking any law of topology. Mathematicians are in their heads a lot, so their jokes are a little… *makes little circles around temple with her index finger*.
We’re in a forgiving mood, so we forgive them for the jokes. And maybe we forgive them for doing all that mathematicking, too, but we’re not too sure about that yet.
One of the things that started the whole exercise was yet another science dude taking a silly question way (way) too seriously. This was Euler, and the object of his wonderment were the bridges of Königsberg, and whether you could take a walk crossing each of bridge only once.
There’s a whole theory thing with the nodes and connections and all that stuff that says “no, you can’t”. (This part interests me less than the part that this is how they make underground maps now. It doesn’t matter, you don’t need to think about all that. You just need to know where all the changes are. We’re being gaslit about distances in London for our own good.)
What does matter is that the rest of Königsberg is basically just context. As long as all the holes and connections are the same, the problem remains. You’d have to really screw with Königsberg to change the crux of the issue. Because when you have in front of you a topologic set, without fundamentally altering the conditions, you’re stuck with the holes and the points that you got.
☄. *. ⋆
I was hanging out with a friend at his apartment, many years ago. I was 17 or 18. He was very cool. He knew all the long words and made a living drawing digital art while high. You could talk to him about anything. He was 22, a 17 year old’s version of an adult. I was counting minutes waiting for him to realise I’m not cool enough, or too stupid, at which point he would ask me to leave.
He never did.
“Something ain’t right with you,” he’d say on a long smoky exhale. “Nothing this adorable can be good. Something demonic about it.”
I was sooooooo pleased with myself.
He was a source of many wisdoms. Like the fact that when hungover, you have to kill the poison in your blood with more poison, so you must drink Coke and eat fast food. That type of thing.
One day we were lazying around, probably half-watching something dumb. I laughed the way I always do: out loud. “How are you always so happy?” he asked. He sounded almost annoyed.
I’m not, I said. “I’m just quite a cheerful person.”
It’s true.
“Why are you so fucking cheerful, Ani?”
At 17 I’ve never heard of NLP, not that I follow it now, but it might have helped me explain things. On my personal timeline, this was before self-help. I knew even less of topology. On my personal timeline, this was before math, too. (Everything still is.)
“I change my mind,” I told him. “When something bothers me, I look at it and I try to walk around it and see if it looks different. I wrap my mind around it different ways and pull back until I find a way of seeing that I can live with, or make sense of it for my own context.”
“So you just bend reality to your will, huh?” He shrugged. I thought he had it all backwards and upside down. I could tell he was disappointed that I don’t in fact have some inner source of strength or something. He thought I was stoic, but I was actually just delusional.
“Hey!” I wanted to say. “Purposeful and persistent self-delusion is a skill and a strength and a talent!” I decided to leave it. Winning a philosophical debate against him didn’t seem possible.
☄. *. ⋆
But you know, this is all just a fun mental exercise anyway. Just because you have the power to turn a cup into a doughnut doesn’t mean that sometimes you shouldn’t just have your tea and shut up about it. My friend was right: the last thing I have any power to change is myself.
I don’t know if Euler was sitting at his desk, or if he was walking or running around Königsberg. I don’t know if it was October or March. He probably smelled pretty bad though, it was the 18th century after all, but that’s neither here nor there.
It probably took him all of October 16th, 18th, 30th, and then some to figure out the bridges. At his core he remained a topologic constant aimed at solving a problem, just like I have been, trying to talk to you about it, all while running, sitting, lying down, walking.
And you know, Euler would find a way to ruin a walk around Bethnal Green just as well as he could in Königsberg, I’m sure of it. Ah, I don’t know. Is it math or is it life? You tell me. (No really, someone tell me.)
I love how you spin time here, letting October 16th and 18th mingle like characters in a half-dreamed narrative. I’m drawn in by the way you wander Bethnal Green’s streets, slipping between now and then, as if each memory is simply folded into a larger topological map of your experience—like the doughnut and the cup, indistinct and yet, here in your telling, alive with their own idiosyncrasies.
There’s a quiet, gleeful irony in the parallel you draw between your half-marathon training and this meander, so different and yet, somehow, much the same. And there’s this delicious interweaving of both inner and outer landscapes, each as hazy or fixed as the other, each a strange, shifting mirror. I feel like I’m right there beside you, threading through the fairy-tale houses, drawn by your refusal to speed up or chase, instead letting the world simply wrap around you in gentle, contemplative spirals.
Your memories of youth, of that friend with his lazy wisdom, glisten with the authenticity of small epiphanies that somehow seem more profound with each retelling. And Euler, of all people, arrives just when he’s needed, as though he’s been lurking on the fringes all along, only to surface now, adding his weight to the swirl of half-comprehended theories and half-forgotten walks. You don’t solve the puzzle of Königsberg, of course—not outright—but instead reveal the delightful entanglement of ideas, places, and people that echo back to it, each folding effortlessly into this October walk.
Your way of observing is a gift, a slow attention that renders each layer of your world palpable.
Love the writing! Thanks for sharing :)