Ferodo slammed his left fist down on the table, his right was holding a diamond ring in his coat pocket, so tightly it was starting to hurt.  Now he decided it was too late to make his proposal, couldn’t possibly do that right now, not when Alice was fighting with him.  He had carefully calculated the day, the time, the scene, the location, and what on earth got into him that he had to invite one of Alice’s best friends along.  IT was just becoming a mess as usual.  He loved Alice, but never seemed able to let her know how his heart really felt.

He had graduated in Astronomy and his speciality, the solar system was as always pretty close to the top of his mind.  He had chosen this room, the Kepler room, because of the modern leather seats, coupled with the polished mahogany table.  Dinner here would be special, on the occasion of his graduation.  He had invited his two most special friends in the universe, Kate and Alice.  He had on hand some champagne called in for the occasion, courtesy his old man, a professor at the university itself.

Alice took the champagne, opened it, and poured some for all of them, the crystal glasses glinted in the light and after the wine was poured it just sat there, sparkling with no real purpose.

Kate sat there embarrassed, she had some colored paper from other presents given earlier in the day.  She asked Alice for some scissors, which she knew Alice always kept with her, along with tape measures and other things in that purse of hers. Kate started to cut all the different colored paper into squares and then slits.  This took a bit of time, but it kept her busy while Ferodo and Alice were fighting silently, patiently  like this.   After a while she started to assemble the squares of paper into a slightly spherical construction like a 30 sides polyhedron, made of colored paper.

It was Kepler who figured out that elliptical orbits were ok and our planets all had them, and that there was a calculus that could describe the ellipse based on the observed speed of the moving body.  That wonderful calculus like any belied the basic need he had to prove the love of God and the natural order of the universe.

Alice sat there, waiting, empty handed.  Kate gave her back the scissors.  So it was that they all sat there in a kind of sparkly threatening silence with the champagne poured.

• Alice with the Scissors.
• Kate with the Paper.
• Ferodo with the Rock.

All in orbit around the table, and around the champagne, and around the real issue.

They all three understood their sharp need for love.

Simple

Notes:

Title attributed to Cait S. from Twitter @legerdenez,

Polyhedron Photo attributed to fdecomite from Flickr  – with permission

Calculus photo attributed to Peter Rosbjerg from Flickr – with permission