It is on the list of my top five all-time favourite feelings. But I know of no word for it in English that properly captures it. This is strange, since so much of our society relies on things that probably came about in accompaniment with this feeling. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes it come on so strongly that it feels like a switch has been flicked inside my head, with an almost audible “click”, often accompanied by a smile, an oral exclamation, or even a moan. Why can I not think of a word for it? Perhaps my vocabulary is failing me, but if there is not such a word, then we should set about forging a new one, since it is so important.
What am I talking about?
It is that moment when a pattern falls into place in your mind, and you see it clearly, right there in your mind. I’m not doing a good job of explaining it -sorry- but it is nonetheless very real. A typical example is when you’ve been puzzling over a lot of facts, clues, or pieces of data, scrutinizing them again and again, but seeing only a jumble. Then, for whatever reason (either a new fact comes in, or you start again from scratch relaxing some initial assumption, or the light’s just shining on everything a little differently than before) all of a sudden it clicks together –snap!– and it feels so good.
It is not a good feeling because you feel pleased with yourself, or smarter than anyone else, or something like that. No, it has nothing to do with anyone else. It is just a good and sometimes tingling feeling inside your head somewhere that comes on. It is sometimes much stronger if I’ve been puzzling over the matter for a longer time than normal.
At other times, it comes on strongly even if you were not trying to figure something out, but instead you simply found a new pattern that gives a new level of meaning to things that were already familiar. That can be a huge feeling too – as though your brain is now going back through everything you know that relates to it and updating it with links to that new pattern.
My earliest memory of this Feeling comes from this second type. I was very young. I imagine that it was soon after the beginning of my time on the Caribbean island of Montserrat where I lived for ten years from the age of four. In those times (I do not know if that is still true) a common product down there was a type of powdered milk. The brand name was KLIM. Some of you might recoil at the thought of using powdered milk as a staple of one’s diet, but it was what most people could afford – fresh milk was hard to come by in large quantities, and this helped supply a lot of important nutrition1.
Well, it might seem obvious to you now, but it certainly was not clear to me initially that there was a pattern there in the brand name. I’m not even sure I was old enough to appreciate the concept of a brand name (and branding in the world of a child seems to have been much less in-your-face than it is now) – I just learned that it was called “KLIM”.
I remember clearly to this day the feeling that came over that curious little boy (me) that day when I was sitting in the kitchen looking around (as I did a lot) at what was going on and at the various bottles and cans and their labels, and it occurred to me that “KLIM” was “MILK” spelled backwards. It was just great. I excitedly tried to tell others (adults) about it, but they did not seem to think this was very interesting. Perhaps it was too obvious to them, and they’d been reading for so much longer than me, so maybe it was not a big deal2.
Anyway, back to the Feeling itself. It probably happens to most people, since there are puzzles and patterns all around us in everyday life, but it is also part of what I do professionally. I think that part of the reason I work in the field I do is that I get to do this sort of thing every day, and get that lovely feeling from time to time in my scientific research. And I get to show others how to do it and bring about that feeling too. And I get paid for it, which is rather handy3. Often the struggle before that click can be long and frustrating, and it can be on a problem that nobody cares about at all, resulting in a research paper that nobody will read. But I don’t care. It’s just a great feeling.
-cvj
_________________________________________________________________________________
- Later, we moved into the hills and had a cow -literally- and then had really fresh milk, but that’s another story. [return]
- The reason I thought of this matter, and wrote this post was because of this memory, and because of a car license plate I saw in a parking lot when leaving Santa Monica yesterday after a half day at the beach. There’s a picture of it for you in the main body of the post. I can’t help but wonder what the story is behind that choice of plate. [return]
- Reading those last few sentences again, I suppose this makes me sound like an analogue of a (minor) star in the sex movie industry. I can live with that. Therein lies one or two of the few other feelings that can be on the same exalted list as the one I’m talking about. [return]
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There is a mental image that helped me in association with the term “Hirameki” supplied above. I thought is may be of comparative value?
Just imagine “the box” is your brain. 🙂 That one eventually tends to “start working outside the box, ” whilst still attached to all those things of science boxed?
I am always trying to define this process myself. So some thoughts and hopefully it is not to long and takes up to much space.
I mention a issue about “deep play” that is extremely important in context of trying to find that right word. While trying to find it, there must be this emotive attachment. It is about the process itself. It had to touch a “physical domain in the brain” for it to be retrievable, and holds vast importance? After that you own it. You reflect it?
You might say “do not trust this flash of insight” (Hirameki seems like a good word to me as well) from daily workings? It is an intuitive process, so “working it” after having it is extremely important. You have “defined the position” from which your are now seeing?
According to one view, a koan embodies a realized principle, or law of reality. Koans often appear paradoxical or linguistically meaningless dialogs or questions. The ‘answer’ to the koan involves a transformation of perspective or consciousness, which may be either radical or subtle, but not to be confused with the experience of metanoia in Christianity. They are a tool to allow the student to approach enlightenment by essentially ‘short-circuiting’ the logical way we order the world. In order to try to answer these often unanswerable problems, the thinker may be forced to create new mental pathways. Those pathways then may be useful for other problems, thus producing a “mind expansion” effect.
One may say that it changes the “total perspective” so that in itself you have become a model of, the model worked. By example, a Koan holds something of “schematic value?” It leaves some thoughts “about the process in itself.”
It’s sort of like creating an “open doorway,” to new avenues of thought capable. It is not “mystical by nature.” It just is. New routes to the math never before seen?
Things can be conducive to it I think, yet in the practise of the koan, is it about “knowing how deep one has to go?” A lot of stimuli can make it difficult for some, while “selective stimuli” can be found conducive in my opinion. Sitting by a river perhaps. The right Music in the background. Finding thought process in absences of our working day?
Those in the beginning may have to take the time to find that place in themself first and such stimuli may be counter productive. Listen to your own heart beat. How slow can it go and what does it reflect of what is happening with you? One had to calm the waters before you can see into it’s depths? This has an “emotive valuation” to it?
What an honour it is to be able to make a small contribution to your stimulating blog.
Cheers!
Thank you! That is a great word! and the meaning – “mental lightning”, is just perfect – fantastic.
Hirameki.
I think I have found my word!
Thank you very much.
-cvj
Many comments are rich and deep in context. Enjoyed reading all of them.
In Japanese language there is a word ‘hirameki’- mental lightening. It describes a moment when suddenly every single cell in your whole being is turned on by piercing insight or creative scintillation. It adds the jolting sensation to ‘eureka’. It may not be as deep as ‘quale’, but more intuitive.
Just to revisit the idea of the synaptic moments, the poem I was thinking of was not the one where I, in my oft-used absurdist tone, said the “synapses were synapsing, ” it was a poem where I was trying to describe the feeling and at the same time say what was causing the feelings. I knew before I searched my boxes full of notebooks that I had an error in the beginning of the poem, and like Supernova’s (and my own) recognition of pronouncing “misled” as “mizled,” I suddenly felt embarrassed that I had never checked this error until now.
The error was in the first line:
“You laughed when I said
the positive ions were jumping
around in the air.
Yet could you explain the crackling
of the atmosphere –
the way space took shape
and became alive?”
We were walking on the beach – it should have been negative ions. And he was an artist and wasn’t laughing because I was wrong, but because he didn’t know any better and it sounded silly. Gee, nineteen years to fix a mistake in a poem!
Too bad I can’t post the whole poem (it has not-for-public-consumption type of details), because it leads to the inexplicability of paintings and words to describe certain thoughts, in this case it was desire. How does one paint desire? But the whole notebook is rather interesting, at least to me right now, and I thank you Clifford and Supernova for leading me on a rather circuitous route to realizing some things. See what unknown ways a blog can touch someone? 🙂
Now I shall go back to freefalling…from leaving my job. Thanks again.
(I could not control the spacing between “shape” and “and became alive?” I don’t know how to fix it.)
Thanks for your reply, Supernova. 🙂 I had an issue with this word in a similar way and I can remember first reading it as “mizzled” and why and when I realized what I had been doing and that no one had corrected me. Like you, it was something more severe than misled – it was a combination that worked as “mind mauling” someone, so to speak (or at least that was my definition). I was sorry to see it go in a way. It had nothing to do with difficult words or not hearing it pronounced – it was how I read it in the context of the book I was reading at the time(I have so much written down since grade school that I am well aware of what words I knew long before this “misled” issue). It was something else, but I don’t have the time to explain it all, and also, I don’t feel very comfortable posting here, to be truthful.
I will say regarding these moments, that there are terms for them, and I recall a poem I wrote many years ago about “synaptic moments.” There’s also Spalding Gray’s “Swimming to Cambodia” topic of his “perfect moment.” These are similar in ways, because both signify the moment when “things come together” in your mind.
In order for that to happen there has to be a “psychological moment” defined by Webster’s as:
I would say more, but it’s hard to be eloquent or thorough during work. But again, it’s nice to know someone had an issue with “misled”…the Internet is a big place. I need to go find that poem…thanks for reminding me.
Hi TBB,
By “causes and implications” I was trying to communicate that I felt the moment was not only the realization of a misconception, but also an experience that illuminated many other aspects of my life. It had something to do with the fact that I was a fast and voracious reader as a young child, and often read words before I heard them pronounced. It had something to do with the verbal puzzles and wordplay that fascinated me (and that I still enjoy — despite being a scientist, I’m much better at remembering words and letters than numbers, and can manipulate them in my head much more easily). It made me wonder what other words were out there that I was reading incorrectly and whether anyone else had ever made that mistake (I later met a friend who told the same story, so I suspect it’s not uncommon). And it made me think about words that don’t exist in English, but should — “misle” had some connection with “miser” in my mind, and connoted something meaner and sneakier to me than “mislead.”
“Aha” indeed. 🙂
Hi pedant,
Thanks for those thoughts. I must get around to reading that book one day.
I have not looked over at CV for a while. Will look for the article you mention and get back to you if there is anything to say. May take a day or two as I’ve just come back from a trip and have a backlog of things to do.
Cheers,
-cvj
The ‘moment’ is doubtless what captivates youngsters, and beckons them ever further on into a scientific career. Even my own scabrous life experience has provided examples of this. My first encounter with the charisma of science, at the grammar school close by, where we used to watch the boys play cricket on a Saturday afternoon; the chemistry master, discerning my ennui, suggested that i check out some spectacular photochromic reactions. (Flash forward to the twenty first century – no, he was not a paedophile. Rock on Mr. Heywood, you were a star; as a populariser of science, you were the CVJ of your day.) Back at primary school, show and tell, I was chastised for attempting to describe a visit to the lavatory (c.f. laboratory). Nonetheless I was hooked; thereafter the ‘aha’ moment has, from time to time, reared its lovely head and has continued to beguile me, even into late middle age. (Say it loud, grey is proud!) And what do I make of this seducer/seductress? It’s been a blast when you get it right. Sad to say it’s just as good when you get it wrong, until your bowels melt as you recognise a self-deluding oversight for what it is. Perhaps the most enchanting ‘aha’ moment I know of is that described by Penrose (somewhere in the emperor’s new mind): after an extended period of mental exertion, he paused at an Oxford kerbside. He attempted to cross the road, and was almost mown down (Charles and Sebastian, perhaps, though RP is not quite that old). Even so, he is ecstatically happy, and, come the evening, feels compelled to reconsider his day. It is only then that he remembers a very, very good idea he had. Now that is a cracker.
BTW CVJ. what is your take on the ‘cult of genius’ debate currently raging over at your old stomping ground over at Cosmic Bariance?
Supernova, I found your comment to be extremely interesting. And regarding this:
“At some point I made the connection, realizing my error along with all its causes and implications.”
What do you think the causes and implications were? I’d very much like the favor of a reply, thank you.
Sara…. please tell us more about what a localizer and a glidescope are and what you use them for!! I’m curious…
-cvj
This might be an antithesis feeling in a way, but it still requires intellect: the feeling one gets when one performs a very complex thinking and acting task totally smoothly, having integrated all the various steps that make it up.
This is kind of a “Zen-like” or “smooth” or “connected” feeling.
My favorite example is when I NAIL an ILS approach – totally on the localizer and the glideslope, making the only infinitesimally necessary changes to maintain the cross section of both, and being on the right time sequence and doing it seemingly effortlessly and it all just works, me and the plane and the approach and the runway coming up and ATC, etc.
Sara T.
(noticing once again when I’ve not flown for a few weeks I talk about it alot more!)
I’m coming late to the discussion, but just had to add my own linguistic “aha” moment. I was probably around 20 or so when I finally realized there was no verb “to misle” (pronounced in my head MY-zel), and that the word I had always read as the past tense of “misle” was really the past tense of “mislead.” Of course I knew the word “mislead” and its various forms, but had tended to read the written word “misled” incorrectly when I encountered it in print. At some point I made the connection, realizing my error along with all its causes and implications. Unfortunately, it was a realization that made me feel silly, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. 🙂
I’ve been lucky enough to have a few scientific “aha” moments too, and the feeling is amazingly addictive. I sometimes think we all became scientists simply in order to chase that feeling! “Serendipity” is another term that captures some of its aspects, but certainly not all.
Moloko – a name check for the ‘old moloko plus’, a pharmaceutically enhanced beverage ‘peeted’ by Alex, Dim and the other droogs in A Clockwork Orange. This dystopian tale has spawned several group names – perhaps our host remembers Heaven Seventeen
Wow… I derive immense satisfaction from singing along with “I can’t get no satisfaction.” I didn’t realize how weird that was until now… 😉
All I can say is, you ain’t no Mick Jagger because you certainly can get satisfaction.
IP:- Well, those will have to wait for another time, or blog post, perhaps.
Cheers,
-cvj
Yes, the cows were on parade in Edinburgh last summer.
Also, I’m with Feynman — self-gratification, and the Feeling, can be useful, but that’s not why we do them.
Out of curiousity, what were your other four top favourite feelings?
–IP
The Italian philosopher Silvio Ceccato told me the word they use (or they used) in Vicenza and perhaps also in Venice, for that purpose.
It is ‘or’.
Now I must say that ‘or’ sounds and means both ‘oro’ [gold] and ‘ora’ [now].
So you can understand why they use (or they used in the past) that expression.
There’s a ton of absolutely vital stuff out there that’s being done by people who hate doing it, but have little choice.
well, we all have to do stuff we hate, but I see what you mean. By ‘making the difference’ I didn’t mean to say the rest isn’t important. But I’d also like to mention that what we do on our ‘job’ isn’t it. The German word for profession is ‘Beruf’ which means actually more a ‘calling’ or so. I’ve always thought this applies to far more than what-you-do-to-pay-the-rent. It’s more about finding your place in the world, but that doesn’t have to be in your job.
“It’s without any doubt that those of us who genuinely love their job are the ones that make the difference.”
I’ll have to sound a word or two of caution there. There’s a ton of absolutely vital stuff out there that’s being done by people who hate doing it, but have little choice. We must not forget.
As for the cows… yes, they are brilliant. And don’t forget the various painted cows that you can find on the sidewalks of various cities…. “cows on parade”. I used to love those. Are they still happening, or did that all stop?
-cvj
or much of what we do will then be more easily dismissed as a type of self-gratification that serves nobody else
Evolution doesn’t work unless the happiness of one is tuned to the progress and well-being of the whole. It’s without any doubt that those of us who genuinely love their job are the ones that make the difference.
… sorry, can’t resist:
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” — Richard P. Feynman
@Amara: Thanks for the cows :-), it did make me laugh. (Sometimes these comment section surely drift off into the absurd, so I’ll try to avoid more free association).
Best,
B.
True… but whether one thinks it is or not at the time, nevertheless it often *is* useful, in terms of the benefits to society of those wodnerful ideas. That’s the difference.
Cheers,
-cvj
True, but it is also the case that when one has an aha moment (or the aha-ness of), one isn’t thinking of anyone else, or of it’s usefulness.
–IP
I like that. Thanks Yvette!
Matt… you may be on to something there too, but we should be careful, perhaps, not to choose terms from that area, or much of what we do will then be more easily dismissed as a type of self-gratification that serves nobody else…. which is so far from the truth of the situation.
Cheers,
-cvj
Carl Sagan spent a long time wondering about this in Contact, where he called it awe or numinousness. It was my favorite book back when I was in high school, but I always remember this part best nowadays:
Hmmm, I think I had a point in posting this but can’t quite recall what it was. I’ll leave that for you all to figure out I guess…
Lol, unfortunately, philosophy doesn’t supply the particular word. Epiphenomenalists would just call it “the quale of the aha-moment” or “the aha-ness of the aha-moment”.
Of course, epiphenomenalism has a host of philosophical problems since it is a position in the mind-body debate. But it works nicely for linguistic issues.
–IP
I hate to say it, or maybe I don’t, but it sounds a lot like an intellectual orgasm.
Yes! Yes! 1000 times Yes! That’s it exactly!
Thanks!
-cvj
Are you after the word for what philosophers call the ephiphenomenological quale? Qualia (singluar: quale) are the “what-it-is-like-ness” of experiences — the “redness” of red, the “sadness” of being sad, the “hugnes” of hugs.
So it sounds like you’re after the word that encompasses the aha-ness of the aha moment (so to speak)?
–IP
Epiphany -a good word, and very familiar word to me- is a name for (and thus identifies) the process in the abstract, but I claim that there is no good word in common use that gets at the actual feeling that comes over you. These are different things. It is sort of like the difference between listening and hearing, but much more so.
-cvj
P.S. Are you sure that epiphany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_%28feeling%29
is not the English word that you are searching for? I think it is deep (and juicy), at least that is how I use the word to describe the moments when an understanding almost knocks me over. I would like to have more of those epiphanies!
I don’t know why, but cows and Moloko made me think of Milton Keynes’ concrete cows.
A few years ago while I was on a plane to England to work with colleagues in Milton Keynes, the nice couple next to me asked me if I’d seen the concrete cows yet. “No,” I said, not sure what they were talking about. So I looked it up. Milton Keyne’s concrete cows have an engaging history in the same alternate universe as the Museum of Noses in Rome.
Here is a panarama of the cows (hold the mouse and move).
Definitely off topic, but I hope it made you smile.
Try using the coca-cola red and white swoopy writing and background for another product and you’ll wait only a fraction of a second for the lawsuit to arrive….
I have a T-shirt that says ‘Enjoy California’ in CocaCola-writing
But sure. Words are empty.
Bee:- About the photo… Yes, I did see your post. I’d simply say that the logos have not been removed at all. The least important part of the signs have been removed – the writing. The big brands are more than just the combinations of letters in their names…. they are the designs and the colours of the whole logo. In fact, more money can be spent on such designs than the names themselves. Try using the coca-cola red and white swoopy writing and background for another product and you’ll wait only a fraction of a second for the lawsuit to arrive…. But I imagine you know that and said all that in your post… I’ve forgotten where it was I saw it in your blog.
Cheers,
-cvj
Romain: “déclic” sounds good. I like that. Perhaps we should start there.
“Eureka moment” and “Aha moment” as phrases just don’t get across what I’m trying to convey about the Feeling. At least not to me. They don’t communicate the delicious combination of combination of relief, chill, warmth, excitement, buzz…. that comes to you all of a sudden when stuff just clicks into place in your head.
-cvj
Bee said:
How do you know it was a guy’s car?
Thanks for telling me about the band Moloko. I’d not heard of them before. Will keep an eye out for them. “…the cows fell into place” is a very amusingly visual turn of phrase!
-cvj
🙂
(btw, my husband taught me ‘loo’ is Dutch for a small forest or so, and not, well, a loo)
H20LOO = Waterloo.
“Aha!” and “Lightbulb moment” and “eureka moment” all seem like ways of referring to the Feeling. But I still don’t know what the Feeling-ness of the Feeling is called, if you see what I mean 😉
Great post.
Cheers,
IP
Of course I understood “the symmetry” in the license plate the first time. That it is a defining moment for one’s youth? I wonder sometimes if this does not set the course in life?
I had been thinking about Einstein’s youth and the compass. Not having all the information the anomaly struck him and this then became his calling too? I have other examples with which I will not talk further.
I wanted to construct a sentence that ‘s going to contain three links to three different pictures. It is a form of brain calisthenics, to loosen up.
Of course observation is important to a scientist for problem solving? 🙂
My earlier comment of Clifford’s was taken from here
let’s try this… no, that doesn’t work… let’s try this… no, that doesn’t work… let’s try this… no, that doesn’t work… let’s try this… oh hey, it works.
Hey Aaron 🙂
yeah, same for me. But you know what, I had quite an interesting moment 2 years ago. I had to give a seminar about a topic I hadn’t worked on for a while. So I printed one of my own papers and read it. I was all: who wrote this paper and what did she try to say? (To begin with I noticed that the referee was right to mention that ‘the English is awful and needs improvement’). The next day I woke up in the morning and realized what I had written in that paper and for the first time actually understood it. The interesting thing is that I hadn’t realized before what all these equations mean. How weird is that?
Hey Clifford,
you know a band called Moloko? Their first album (the one with ‘Sing it Back’) is all crowded with cows. I’ve been scratching my head over these pictures for quite some while, there’s nothing on the album remotely related to these stupid cows. I learned some years later that Moloko is Russian for ‘Milk’. I still don’t know who would want to name a band after this word, but at least the cows fell into place. (Btw the more recent album ‘Statues’ is pretty good).
Best,
B.
Tube light moment?
In french we call that a “déclic”, which is a kind of click (clic in french), but more than a sound. It embodies the meaning of something ended, solved. You can actually always use clic instead of déclic, but you loose a connotation.
For example, the sound of a combination padlock that opens.
Maybe a “eureka” moment is enough. Until one has had one, the thought of running naked and dripping through the streets will appear insane. My most recent such moment was when I realized that any non Hermitian projection operators in the Pauli algebra can be written in a unique way as a real multiple of a product of two Hermitian projection operators.
What an invitation for LaTex. Unfortunately, your LaTex is having issues with an interaction between arrays and the things inside the array. Anyway, the usual Pauli projection operators define a single axis for the spin state. Non Hermitian Pauli projection operators have two perpendicular axes, one a real spin axis, the other an imaginary spin axis.
Re the license plate. Well to me, “MLK” will always mean Martin Luther King. I ran juke boxes and pinball machines in Seattle for years, and two of my favorite locations were in the mostly black parts of the city. The name of the main drag there is “Martin Luther King Way”, a name which is often given an astronomical pronunciation: “milkyway”. And some of the finest Southern cooking in Seattle is available just next door to a place I ran equipment, Catfish Corner on milkyway.
Everybody I know calls it “aha!” I’ve never had it, though. On the rare occasion that the answer comes to me in a flash of light, it’s usually wrong! 🙂 When I’m working on a problem, it’s more like,
let’s try this… no, that doesn’t work… let’s try this… no, that doesn’t work… let’s try this… no, that doesn’t work… let’s try this… oh hey, it works.
Hi Clifford,
it’s funny you have the picture of a licence plate there. I am still proud if I figure out what people try to say with their abbreviations – it’s kind of hard for me in English. Yesterday, I saw a car around here which had H2OLOO, can you figure it out? (Today I saw a GR8LUVR – sometimes I wonder what kind of guy picks a plate like that.)
In Germany its called the ‘Aha-Effekt’ as well (it means what you think it means). I also mentioned it as one of the points that we identify with beauty. See
The Beauty of it All
(point 5, problem solving)
Best,
B.
PS: And in case you haven’t already read the anwer in my post, what’s wrong with this photo?
We always referred to it as the “Aha!” instant as well. It was a staple of conversation in college because it’s the instant where you suddenly know and it arrives in a flash.
It’s called “Aha!”. Martin Gardner wrote a book about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Aha-Insight-Martin-Gardner/dp/071671017X/sr=1-2/qid=1171836810/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-0465457-3356605?ie=UTF8&s=books
Intuition?
When I was reading this post of yours there was something “vaguely” familiar about it.
So of course “the key word” here would have been what had lead me to search for what that familiarity was.
It would be easier then to replace “this vagueness with your own words” and then of course this could lead into all other avenues of investigation.
Before I continue I just wanted to say I did this for may own children to make “an impact.”
While I had my own history growing up too, I wanted to bring some of that into my children’s lives. So unbeknownst to them I used “some numbers” from my past. I never told them about those numbers.
While taking them all back to a family wedding I took them to the home I grew up in. I got somebody to take a picture of all of us standing in front of the house.
It was while my wife and I were standing that my boy older now quite excitingly came up to me and said, “Dad I know where you got your telephone number.” Behind us at the top of the door was my old address number.
Do you think he will forget what that number means?
Anyway “not to lessen the impact of your post, here are your words previous.
Clifford:
Here the idea of a picture is like “the crime scene” would ask that any vagueness be further clarified in processes that scientists use? Bee related this to the “pursuances of Pi” to incorporate such images as reminders of what?
As your students “walk the halls” we(institute) would like you to remember?
Uh… no. Not that word. No, it has been tainted too much, I think.
But thanks.
-cvj
Borrow “grok” from Heinlein perhaps???
Hey Candace! Long time since I’ve heard from you….
no, I don’t think so. Itis too abstract. It does not really get at the real juice of the feeling. if you know what I mean.
Cheers,
-cvj
Is ‘epiphany’ good enough to describe that feeling?
Nice story about the Klim. That’s happened to me a couple of times, but strangely I can’t recall them offhand — boo.