haunted by wonderful things.

i had meant to post yesterday, but today was a meeting with the advisor and i was hoping to prove a theorem or two for the occasion.


i think i've been convinced of the importance of currents on metric spaces. yesterday i heard a talk by urs lang that was very challenging to follow, but fascinating ..

.. and no, i don't think i can explain it very well. i can say that there was the spirit of hyperbolic geometry in it, but it was a very metric talk. it invoked the metric currents of ambrosio & kirchheim and passed to the world of gromov: metric hyperbolicity, asymptotic cones, even the metric version of the "euclidean" isoperimetric inequality due to gromov and to s. wenger.

it was the sort of talk that, afterwards, i was in a daze. this was terrific stuff, but comparing it to my paltry efforts at research, it left me slightly depressed. i couldn't concentrate for a while, and i left the office to forget about things and to have dinner with friends.

it was hard to work after that, and it was only after a good cup of coffee this morning that i felt like my old self again.

it's a silly thing to feel so overwhelmed, or rather, to let myself get overwhelmed again.

what can i say? sometimes it is a difficult thing to live with -- knowing what is possible -- because by seeing it, we realise our limitations, and our shortcomings that are not due to limitations.

these men have dreamed and dared, and so have discovered something which inspires others. i don't know if i'll ever be capable of the same, but the fact that it can be done ..

.. it makes my inner voice ask me, what's stopping you, to do the same, to dare and to give others a dream? and i can never answer.