Another Letter: Calculating Infinity
To you (whoever that may be),
The limit as x goes to infinity of something. It doesn't matter what function it is. It doesn't matter if you know what that it. It doesn't matter. All it does is find a horizontal asymptote of a function. It doesn't matter if you know what that means either. Some functions, as x goes to infinity, will settle upon a number, growing closer to this expected value for the rest of the function's existence.
Why does that matter? Why am I telling you this?
I wonder what will happen as I go to infinity.
Will I reach the ripe old average lifespan of an American? Will surpass it and grow aged and ill-tempered, seeing generations flair into existence, create new generations, and snuff into oblivion? Will I die before I get there, remembered by surviving friends and family members or forgotten in a passing glance? Will someone, searching through my personal belongings, find the hastily written letter from sixth grade, ink smeared from splattering tear stains and edges crumpled from a shaky grip? Will they analyze my life for "warning signs"? Will they pick apart the pieces of who I was or will be to idolize the good, to objectify the bad? Or will a stranger's shrug be at my passing, propelling my human memory into the abyss of what once was concrete and what now is conditional?
What will happen along the way?
Will I fulfill my half-sung promise? Will I truly leave this town, county, state, nation, never to return? Or will I find rest in the constant stand-still of inaction and "what if"s? Will I become a polyglot, able to correspond with people from all walks of life, or will I forget the language I struggle to grasp, and, by the end, forget the tongue spoken to me while I was held to my mother's breast?
What of you? As I go to infinity, what will you be?
Maybe you're a passing glance on the sidewalk, a glare, grimace, smile, frown, that will be burned into my existence. Maybe, you will be my forever, but not to infinity. Will you be my lover for a night? A day? A year? A month? Will you fall to your knees and seal an infinity, only to leave in legal struggle after you truly realize who I am? Will you spend the rest of your infinity with me, while we blossom and shrivel into dried dates, sweet and content to watch the world pass by? Will we birth into existence new infinities, have finite beliefs but infinite futures and raise them into what we hope they'll be but always in wonder, never truly disappointed? Will you give me your jacket when I'm cold? Will you comfort me when ras-le-bol of life overwhelms? Will you confide in me when you have troubles? Will I be your light even though all I see in myself is darkness? Or, are you just any point that I kiss on the travel droit a l'oubli? Will I be tangent to you for a blurry second, where, like cars racing side-by-side, I'll glance out the fogged window to see your face?
But, for that one moment, our infinities will be the same.
However the red string ties our fingers through time, we will one day meet. The extent to which we know each other is up to possibility.
What would it look like to go to infinity?
