As my improv group sleeps around me, it's time to write to you all in the rest of the world. It's after four in Toronto, but I'm not too worried. We're all out here for the Toronto International Improv Festival. We're performing tomorrow (and saw some great shows today), and a few of us, including myself, are taking a five hour workshop tomorrow (called "If it makes you happy") as well. We saw some good improv tonight, especially Aphasia, a group doing character based one scene shows with almost no plot. Amazing. One of the first shows in a while where I wasn't tired out as an audience member.

Aside from the festival, we've been having a great time. This hostel in Toronto is off the hook fun. I ended up staying out till 7:30am last night with some folks I met, and there's been plenty of dancing and festivities. In general, the hostel crowd is just a great group. I'm shocked at how much I'm enjoying everything. And, of course, it's a great bonding experience for QMF.

Still waiting to hear if I get into Unexpected Productions, the biggest Seattle group. Improv is so great, once it gets good.

I've been delinquent in posting, due partly to the spotty access to internet, and partly to general busyness. The conference has been going really well, and I feel ready to dive back into my own work. Meanwhile, it's been punctuated by two phenomenal weekends in Lyon. I'll write about it all when I can. For the moment, though, I've got another lecture coming, and coffee to drink before it comes.

This week could be trickier. Many of the other grad students around my level have gone home. The third week is supposed to be for experts. We'll see what I can follow, and how it shapes up.

It was a roaring nine days in Lyon, and after many picnics, walks through the park, long conversations, several parties, some dancing, some drinking, some fancy dinners, and a couple of late night cab rides, I'm faced with the bizarre realization that Katie and I, for whatever reason, were more popular in this city then we've ever been. It's hard to know what to make of it. It seemed like everywhere I went, new people would be extending a remarkable generosity, and party invitations and dinner dates followed. Katie's core Lyonais friends, meanwhile, seemed to be almost enamored with us. A trio of hip, interesting, scintillating French young thirty-somethings seemed to have nothing better to do than hang out with us (or try) virtually every day. Is Lyon simply an incredibly generous city? Was it good fortune? Or is there some exotic scent that clings to the American liberal these days?

In any case, I'm now in Grenoble, and just finished with the first day of math lectures. The math folks seem pretty nice, and the talks alternated between fascinating and left field. I finally learned what nef divisors are in a way that makes sense, which is nice because they're discussed pretty often, though I was too tired and distracted to really get what plurisubharmonic functions are for (plus I don't really groove on analysis... though his description of them as this tremendously flexible tool that you can hit nonalgebraically in all sorts of ways, and yet still retain, miraculously, key algebraic info was pretty eyebrow raising).

Arriving was a drag. The rooms are squalid, bottom of the student barrel cheap without an ounce of romance. Still, I slept, and it's more incentive to stay out, work in cafes, etc. There's less incentive to work my french now that the math has started again, and I feel almost obliged to hang out with the math folks (though the italians tend to stick together and speak italian). I think I'll probably try to head back to Lyon for the weekend. We have half days on Friday, too--I could have a pretty decent chunk of time there.

Right now, my feet hurt. Also, my head hurts as my feet hurt. There are French people in the kitchen. They are cooking pizza with Katie.

I have a problem. My problem is that speaking French all evening shrinks my vocabulary. It diminishes my capacity to think naturally in English. French is a sieve my words must go through.

The people of Lyon are very friendly. These friends of Katie are wonderful to talk to. They are generous, kind and fun. Still, my brain has tightened into a square shape, like a Japanese watermelon. Maybe after I eat pizza I will be able to think again.

I remember a time when it wasn't like this. My words cascaded like some living waterfall, spreading against every surface, testing every face, then landing on their mark below, in the very pool where in retrospect they were headed all along. With time, my thoughts pulled my words through my own mental landscape like gravity pulls the water to the sea, and all the stone walls and impassable barriers of my mind gave way, little by little, before the inexorable exploring liquid, until my mind became itself, and the thoughts had a home that fit them.

Not in French. Here, I am a simple man. The water is in its cup. It comes from the faucet.

The conversation I wanted to record, from earlier...

Last Wednesday at Levico, we had a half day of math and walked around the lake in the afternoon. It was quite pictureque, and a nice chance to talk to lots of the participants about various things. In particular, I had an excellent conversation with two young professors about why math is important. One of them, a Hungarian named Alex, remarked that he has seen math departments' budgets being cut recently in parts of Europe. ALthough it's a tempting way to save a little cash, he claimed he was seeing the effects play out already. He argued that while math research wasn't necessarily that important, only those who were involved in it could sufficiently ascertain the scope of the subject and teach it appropriately. Hence, with the math or applied math departments crippled, the skills of the engineers and scientists fell in the next five to ten years. He cited an EU study that found, euro for euro, that investments in applied math paid off in a higher ratio than money given to any other department in a university.

This was a new argument to me. In terms of answering the question of what I want to do with myself, and where in the world I would do the most good, or be most effective, it alters my perception of where the social good comes in studying math.

My third day in Lyon, with my old friend Katie. This is quite a nice place; the town is beautiful, the people are friendly, and it seems like a generally nice place to live. Yesterday we picnicked at a lovely park called golden head park, central and large.

The most impressive thing about Lyon is that they have pioneered a bicycle rental program that is, in my opinion, absolutely incredible. Basically, you sign up for a nominal cost--something like one euro per year. Then you have access to bicycles that are locked up at bicycle stations around the city, and which you can check out using a special card. They are free for the first half hour, and then cost around a euro per hour after that. Most people don't ride longer than a half hour to get where they're going. I think they have 4000 bicycles in the city now. The bikes themselves are nearly indestructible three speed cruisers, with automatic, user powered lights and baskets in front. They cost, according to the check out machines, 150 euros each.

I'm not entirely sure how this program was effected, or if it makes any money. Someone told me that some big advertiser with some exclusive control had their deal expire, and the mayor said that if they wanted to renew, the city wanted a bicycle program. Whatever. It's the best urban program I've ever seen, probably. Everyone rides them. If you're interested, it's called velo'v. The website is http://www.velov.grandlyon.com/.

Katie and I are hoping to go to Plum Village this weekend, for a meditation retreat. We'll see if that works out. It is a retreat center/monastery set up by the Buddhist peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, about seven hours from here by train.

Just worked out the details of my 9 hour trip to Lyon tomorrow. I expected worse after the prelimary glance, actually.

There are a couple of things I want to make sure I write about, particularly a conversation on the importance of math (and applied math) I had with some people where I learned some new stuff (they argued that math research was societally important primarily because researchers are essentially the only ones who know enough math to teach it well). But more recently, my advisor gave me a new problem to think about. It's always exciting to get a new problem, though it has a tendency to turn to despair as I take in the expansive vistas of what I don't know.

My arm hurts now, so I'll type more later.

One of the remarkable things about spending hours and hours listening to talks is that, in the many hours when the mind doesn't track what the speaker is talking about, the mind becomes very fertile. Some people work on their own problems during talks that are not in their field. I have done this a tiny bit. But the more productive direction, for the moment, has actually been in daydreams and visions of future art projects. I began a story I've been meaning to write for about five years, which was nice. Even more exciting, I began to understand the shape the dance/math piece I improvised last year at Breitenbush should have. I sketched the outline of the piece (not the movement, yet, but the movements). It's very clear now that it needs to include video of professors, such as the ones here, giving talks. I videotaped a bit of the talk I was watching. Tragically, the memory ran out right before I got the last line, which was the last line I expected and is also the working title of the piece: "I think I'll stop here." 9 out of 10 math lectures end with some variation of this sentiment.

The morning, mathwise, was actually pretty good. I understood much more of the first talks than I expected to. Still, it's hard for mathematics to match the dizzying prospect of creating a dance.

I oversimplified the title of this morning's talk. It was actually

"Moduli Spaces of Varieties of General Type: What's left to be done."

I don't want to give the impression that algebraic geometry is almost finished as field.

I crashed yesterday right after dinner, and slept for about 11 hours. Hopefully this will get me through today's six talks. 

The first is given by Janos Kollar, my advisor's advisor, and hence my so called mathematical grandfather. As you can imagine, there's a fun game of tracing one's mathematical heritage through advisors. My lineage is quite rich. Kollar will be giving a talk that only very important people in a field can give: "Algebraic Geometry: What's left to do."

I sat with him and Sandor, my advisor, at breakfast yesterday. Sandor asked, "So you've met your grandfather?" Kollar asked me about my thesis, and when I said I hadn't defended (or even started) yet, he replied "Still unborn." This lends a fresh new aspect to the choice/life debates.