Men have called me mad but the question is not settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence - whether much that is glorious - whether all that is profound - does not spring from the disease of thought - from modes of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
— Edgar Allen Poe
In order to even approach mathematics without "performance anxiety," one would have to surmount the tyranny of public opinion, which flaunts the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and makes minced meat out of malnurished students of mathematics. It's an evil world, indeed.
I have invested in blank notebooks with no lines, some 2B pencils, erasers ... and the books I had wished to focus on which I had tracked down several years back, have been back-tracking to show pre-requisite material, and must thank Jupiter just for being able to keep the kindle going to burn the fire of enthusiasm.
That is the power, right there. So, it is more akin to keeping a fire going to keep from freezing to death, as opposed to a one way unreciprocated passion for intimacy. Going around the ideas and the notation long enough for one to become ever more familiar with them may present a calm mood where the exploratory parts of the brain are stimulated. This must require a powerful sense of inwardness, since it all exists in the mind, as an abstraction. I have dained to preserving my work simply as an edifice of how I would go about organizing and solving ... as a resource for the rare archeologist of such things. I imagine our species will survive in one form or another, even if in some military base underground. Maybe one of their offspring will be Fated to stumble upon them on the archives.
It is a labor of love. I am making use of this energy and passion to preserve some kind of capsule documenting a transformational period in education, a presentation that is not likely to occur again.
Some time this winter the digital versions will be forthcoming, but I want also to upload the related notebooks containing the exercises, which form the real crux and value of the project as a whole. I am pecking away at both ends of this "work".
It will take a long time to upload all the notebooks, but I will work backwards from where I am at now ... that is, I am still working through the last two texts, which are, the most challenging of all. Using two different versions/editions of the text have to do with transformations from tables to calculators/computers, one from 1964, the other from 1988. I find it is important to include both. Calculating without instruments is a curious phenomena which demands things such as patience. To the outside world, I might be made out to be an eccentric loser, but I know in my heart that I must be a rare specimen to take on such a task, and to have made so much headway on it already!
It is as Schopenhauer said of his work, that it felt as though the Holy Ghost were doing the work.
I think I might be able to share my "style" (of approaching mathematics exercises) with some others in the future, after I croak. I think the academics call it an immortality project. I am also paying honor to those mathematicians who attempted to present mathematics with formality and rigor to high school students, even if we were not ready for such depth.