The Book of Math

After yesterday's interview, on my way back to the dorm, Kirara suddenly came to mind again. The professor had asked me, “How do you define art?” I paused, and my mind flashed through countless images. The clearest one was the lawn at Brown University, with her sitting beside me, sketching formulas on blades of grass with her pen.

I told the professor, “To me, art is humanity's way of communicating with the world. It's not merely an expression of emotion, but an attempt at understanding.”Art allows people to find order in chaos, to discover another language when speech fails. In my life, it's a form of breathing—giving emotions an outlet and shaping those thoughts that had nowhere else to settle.

I said my favorite art form is literature. Later, the professor asked if any artist or work had influenced me before. I replied that what affected me most profoundly wasn't a single piece, but a person. Kirara, a friend I met at Brown University's summer program, was a math major who loved writing books. She often used numbers as metaphors and equations as poetry. She said, “Math was how I understood the world, while writing was how I made the world understand me.”

Kirara and I at Brown

The first time she showed me her notebook, I was astonished. The front half was densely packed with symbols and deductions, while the back contained short stories. Her writing was remarkably cool—each sentence precise as a calculation, yet holding tender emotion. She told me logic was a line, emotion a plane, and her stories proved both could coexist.

Sometimes we'd go to the cafeteria together. She liked counting steps as she walked, saying it helped her find her rhythm. She saw patterns everywhere: the sky's hues, the wind's direction, even people's moods. Yet in her most rational moments, a hint of tenderness would always flicker. When I asked why she wrote fiction, she replied that formulas prove the existence of things, while stories prove the existence of people. I've never forgotten those words.

Later, she asked me if she could include us in the acknowledgments of her upcoming book.

That night at Brown, we lay on the grass gazing at the stars. She turned her head toward me and said she was wondering if the stars' distribution followed some probability model. I teased her about never being able to escape numbers. She laughed back, saying math was also an art—just expressed through a different medium. Pointing at the starlight, she murmured softly that it was also a kind of composition, only no one signed their name to it.

Wind rustled through the trees, and distant church bells chimed faintly. In that moment, I understood: the art in her heart wasn't the lines on a canvas or the melodies on sheet music. It was a way of seeing the world—a gaze that was both coolly detached and tenderly compassionate.

At the end of the interview, the professor asked me to summarize my understanding of art in one sentence. I replied, “Art is the translation between me and the world.” 

As the words left my lips, I recalled that night in Brown. Kirara held her notebook to her chest, eyes closed, her hair stirred by the breeze. That image remains frozen in my memory to this day.