Evil Mark

I'm in my office fighting with the notation on a paper I'm writing.

Portrayed on television, Math is: Furiously writing long equations on a whiteboard. Then pausing and look thoughtfully at an integral. Then mumbling, 'No. That can't be right!' and looking angry. Then walking about in thought, angry at the integral. Then seeing a dog hump a rabbit, and getting an idea from it. Then pumping your finger in the air and yelling 'I've got it!' Then running back to your office and re-writing the integral. Then getting the Fields' medal.  

But this isn't real Math. At least for me it isn't.

Sometimes Math is about finding the right notation to describe what I'm doing with some graphs. It's a fight between keeping the notation from getting too complicated, and making it involved enough to account for all necessary ideas. Between consistency and meaning. It is a Pushme-pullme. Math is a pushme-pullme,  and I'm Doctor Dolittle.

I'm in my office fighting with the notation on a paper I'm writing, and someone is pushing furniture around in the room above me. Probably the person whose office is above me. I don't know his name, but I call him Evil Mark. He is my nemesis. He's in the Statistics department. He is my Stats nemesis.

I can't think with all the noise. It is incessant. I pull on my pants and go upstairs to see what is going on. Evil Mark's door is closed. I put my ear to it. I hear nothing. I keep listening. Nothing. I'm there for a minute, two minutes, three. Ha ha ha. Other statisticians walk past and give me a dirty look. "Go calculate something!" I chase them off. But I hear nothing from behind the door. I go back down to my office.

As soon as I get into my office, I hear a desk being dragged across the floor above me. Then something is dropped on the floor. I run back up the stairs and put my ear back to the door. Nothing! I bang on the door, "What the devil is going on in here, Evil Mark?"

Evil Mark opens the door. "Hello?"

"Hi Evil Mark." I say.

"What can I do you for, Mark?"

"You can stop moving your furniture back and forth." I say, looking into his office to find evidence of his noisy nonsense. There are a couple of students in his office, presumably statistics students-- it gets my gaw. But they don't seem to be moving furniture.

Evil Mark steps back with a gesture, as to say he is hiding nothing. "Nobody's moving any furniture here." I can now see the room fully. One student is standing at a chalkboard with chalk in hand, but looking at us. A second student is sitting at a table reading a book.

I look at the chalkboard. There is some math written on it. "You guys work too?" I ask. Then realizing what I've said, I correct myself: "I mean real work -- real math?"

"Ha Ha. No." says Evil Mark, "She's just copied that out of a math book we found. We're just up here counting things."

"Well okay." I say. "You haven't been moving things about?"

"No."

"Listen, Evil Mark." I say, "It has been well established that you are a liar and a scoundrel, but you gain nothing by lying about moving furniture."

"I agree Mark." he replies. "I have nothing to gain. I simply haven't been moving furniture. If I do see anyone moving anything, anything big at all, I'll let you know."

"Okay, thanks." I say and turn away.

"Oh," says Evil Mark. I turn back. He holds his hands about shoulder width apart. "Do you want to know if anyone is moving anything this big?" He moves his hands apart a bit. "Or, this big?" He brings them closer together, awkwardly so. "How about this big?"

"Just anything that is big enough that they have to drag it." I say. "Thanks."

I go back down to my office. On my way, I shake my head a bit, mulling over our conversation. I don't particularly want him to tell me anything about anyone moving anything. If they do, I will hear it anyways. I just want people not to move things.

Conversations with Evil Mark always go this way. I never say what I want to, and don't realize it until after. This is part of why he is my nemesis. That and all of the lying. And the thievery.

When I get back to my office. I hear someone wobbling a cabinet across the floor. I run back upstairs and open Evil Mark's door without even knocking. "Ha!" I yell.

The students are both sitting at the table, working, and my nemesis is sitting at his desk.

"Ha, to you. Mark" He says to me pleasantly. "I haven't seen anything yet. But I promise I'll let you know."

"Right. Thanks." I say, and go back downstairs.

Thinking it over, I realize that the students were different from the students that had been there the first time I went up. It strikes me as odd, but it means nothing more than that to me. When I get back to my office, I sit down and take a swig of coffee. There is no noise from above. I look down at my paper and try to remember where I was. I was working through a draft of my manuscript, mapping out the notation. Working out which letters would stand for which types of graphs, what different superscripts and subscripts would mean, whether or not upper-case Greek letters would look too intimidating as an index. It takes some minutes to get my mind back into it, but I finally recall where I was. And then I hear a jack-hammer start up above me.

I throw my coffee cup at the window in frustration and run back upstairs. I kick open Evil Mark's door. He is hosting a dinner party. There is low flickering candlelight, and thick flowing curtains over the windows that match the tablecloth. Eight people are seated around the table with full place settings and a roast turkey in the middle. The desk is gone, as are the students. The buzz of conversation fades as I burst in with an accusative "Ha!" Evil Mark, sitting at the head of the table, opposite the door, stands up. "Mark," he says, "If I knew you were coming, I would have set another place."

"What's all this?" I demand.

"Just a small gathering of friends." He says.

"Where's your desk?" I ask.

"In my office Mark. This is my dining room." says Evil Mark. "By the way," he continues, gesturing to the woman at the foot of the table, "I don't believe you've met my wife, Evil Eunjoo."

I shake her hand and exchange pleasantries. I tell everyone to have an nice dinner and then walk out closing the door behind me. I put my ear to the door. I hear nothing. I open the door again, and the dinner party looks at me as one. I wave and close the door again. When I get back to my desk, I hear heavy footsteps, and piano being clumsily put down. I put on my earphones and get back to work, drowning out the noise with some old Rufus Wainwright.