What’s past is prologue

I wish I could retrieve the silver ring I lost yesterday. It was a möbius strip, a surface with only one side, an infinite surface—like a Klein bottle. The möbius band has a boundary, whereas the Klein bottle does not. I wore the ring for exactly three years to the day.

About a year ago I mail-ordered a glass Klein bottle from a very kind hippie in California who promised me that a breath of fresh Californian air would be delivered within the winding two-dimensional manifold of the bottle.

His sale slogans are:

“Need a zero-volume bottle? Searching for a one-sided surface? Want the ultimate in non-orientability?

Get an ACME KLEIN BOTTLE!”

Yes to everything, definitely.

I want to get smashed. I’d like to go dancing. I want to re-read The Tempest. “What’s past is prologue.”