Literature

[Rough Draft]

In this section I will eventually put my literature review on the topic of romance.

A few weeks ago, I was making artwork on the idea of taking Mathematics that exists in Reality and Digesting it and then Birthing it into my mythological universe. I want to make my own imaginary and fictional mathematics that is a composite of math-ideas that I like. As I was surfing the internet, somewhat randomly, I found this beautiful symbolic creature, Chhinnamasta, who seems so relevant for my series on romance and for Valentine's Day. The image and text below is from Wikipedia

“She is one of the Mahavidyas, ten goddesses from the esoteric tradition of Tantra, and a ferocious aspect of Devi, the Hindu Mother goddess. The self-decapitated nude goddess, usually standing or seated on a divine copulating couple, holds her own severed head in one hand and a scimitar in another. Three jets of blood spurt out of her bleeding neck and are drunk by her severed head and two attendants.

Chhinnamasta is a goddess of contradictions. She symbolises both aspects of Devi: a life-giver and a life-taker. She is considered both a symbol of sexual self-control and an embodiment of sexual energy, depending upon interpretation. She represents death, temporality, and destruction as well as life, immortality, and recreation. The goddess conveys spiritual self-realization and the awakening of the kundalini – spiritual energy. The legends of Chhinnamasta emphasise her self-sacrifice – sometimes coupled with a maternal element – sexual dominance, and self-destructive fury.”

In my next post (in about a week), I will share some thoughts on the philosophy of Tantra based on a book written by my mother’s thesis advisor.

Info and image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhinnamasta

In my last romance post, I shared a drawing of a fascinating symbolic creature who may embody many concepts taken from the Tantric philosophy. When I asked my mother about it, she told me that her thesis advisor had actually written a book on Tantra and it was probably in the basement! After reading the book, I decided to create a video book report

I found a fascinating TEDx talk on the mathematics of love where John Gottman created phase plots (top) of conversations between romantic partners. In this plot, on the horizontal axis is the emotional state of Partner1 and on the vertical axis is the emotional state of Partner2. The emotional states are measured in a variety of ways such as recording heartbeats during the conversation. In this plot it shows how the emotions of both partners change during a conversation. John Gottman says that those in a good relationship will have an attractor point in the first quadrant (where both are emotionally positive). The means that no matter what the initial conditions are (eg they could start off both negative) they will nevertheless converge towards being positive by the end of the conversation. What caught my attention were the phase plots….because I make them for my own research! In my research, I look at the relationship between position and velocity. In normal earth conditions (left), where people know where they are, they loop around a single attractor point (the gravitational vertical). However, in our spaceflight condition (right) where they do not have a good sense of where they are, it is as if they have multiple attractor points.

If you are interested in this, Ian M. Hunter and I share our initial thoughts on John Gottman’s video through a chill and exploratory conversation. Ian and I also briefly talk about our research.