The Logic of Ruin

by Joseph Grant

From the time he could reason to the tender age of seven when it was first discovered Arthur Rimsdale was a math prodigy, the course of his life had already been set with the start of a long journey of awards and accomplishments and stopping at the destination of his being one of the youngest experts of astrophysics in the world. With the notoriety came the open invitation to teach anywhere but he matriculated at Columbia as New York was the perfect mathematical city in that, it was a prime number among cities as all were compared to it, filled with infinite geometrical positive integers and the hyperbolic geometry of the grids that made the city fascinated Rimsdale and besides, Columbia was where he had met his perfect 36-24-36 as a fellow student, married her and had their perfect 2.0 kids who held a 4.0 average in their private schools when all were not in their flawlessly large Colonial-style house on Long Island. Everything was ideal, more than a man could ask for and that was the problem, thought Arthur and as he rolled his Alfa Romeo up his straight driveway into his heated garage one perfectly crisp winter's day, he couldn't have been more miserable, he thought to himself. According to his calculations, his life was now theoretically half-over and he had nothing to show for it except success and a clinical, reserved life, but he had never taken a chance, never had drawn outside the lines, but far from a mid-life crisis, he deduced, it was more of a life crisis, a wake-up call before the Big Sleep. Everything had always been carefully planned with great care and exactitude with the outcome being quantified to maximum efficiency from his piano and cello lessons to his trigonometry award at eleven to his groundbreaking thesis on thermonuclear fission in deep space. Caught in the wash-rinse-repeat life cycle, he quit his tenure at Columbia, began working in a greasy spoon nearby and when his wife balked, left her for a waitress with a drug problem who already had three kids and counting, moved into a small three bedroom with her in Staten Island, traded the sports car for an SUV and as a result, Arthur Rimsdale celebrated the turmoil that now was his life, elated in the disruption about him and the man who was once an erudite university professor now became an interested student in the logic of ruin.

6S

Joseph Grant is one of 6S's favorite sons, and the hits just keep on coming.