Like my friends, I often worry about what I can achieve, whether I’ll succeed on my own. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I can still hear that most-American of refrains, the one I thought of over and over again on the trail: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. . .
I’ve been doing improv comedy for the last twelve years. Over that time I’ve realized there are at least two types of laughter you hear from the audience. One is a response to something clever or smart, like ‘ha ha I see what you did there, very nice.’ It’s a shallow sort of laugh and one that comes mainly from the mind.
He thought about space the way he thought about mathematics or analytic philosophy or the Torah or Mozart’s twentieth piano concerto, which he sometimes played at night when my sister and I were going to bed. It was beautiful and complex and infinite, and how could you not want to explore that, know where it came from, know where we came from?