cube

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There is a man here.

Where, or who, this man is unimportant, probably. Nothing can be made out in the surroundings. Indeed, it cannot be said that there even are surroundings. No, all that is important is that there is a man, and that he is here.

The man himself is similarly obscured. How unfortunate. Tucked close to his body, an outfit of some kind can be made out, but there is no face to be interpreted, no emotions to read. He is looking away. He is thinking.

He is thinking about geometry.

One can tell a lot about a man by their favorite convex polyhedra. After all, very rarely is a man concave, and so the resultant form is (or, at least, should be.If you are concave in any way, something is wrong. See a cosmetopologist.) entirely convex. Therefore, the judgement of their self-worth is revealed.

There are the Platonic solids (not to be confused with the genre of relationship, of course). There are a (practically) infinite number of their misshapen siblings, yes, but these are the true ones! The ones that matter! The others do not matter. They don't.

We're getting off track. The Platonics. Your tetrahedrons, octohedrons, dozehedrons. All five of them "normal" to some degree. Helpful. Regular, perhaps. Simple and elegant constructions of similarly simple and elegant lower order shapes. They're perfect, he thinks. He can use these. He has to use these.

The man is thinking about one in particular. He cannot decide which one he is thinking about, but it has to be one of them. It is clear it is not the icosahedron, right? That is an idea only let in by convention, too big to be practical, and he waves it off. It also cannot be the tetrahedron, right? That one is too small, too simple. Interesting, but not his cup of tea.

He will reconsider these options again, and again. He reconsiders those previously discarded. Perhaps a smaller thought would satiate him. Maybe a larger one would fill the space better. The idea morphs in front of him, trying to be something worthwhile to him. And still, he is unhappy. He thinks further outside what he had so confidently claimed were his options. The idea becomes great (not good enough), stellar (too far). Maybe the idea can just be an outline, the shape of something so someone else can piece it together. That feels lazy, though, so it tumbles back into (a lack of) shape.

None of these ideas are right, no, and so they are left to stew. He starts to think other thoughts, and those that are forsaken meld in the back of his mind. It's annoying at best, but it eats away at him. Why can he not simply think, he thinks. It should be easy.

The idea has stewed for a while. Maybe he's ready to think of it again, but he does not. It slips further and further down, becoming nothing but a fading reverie, and then a faint whisper, then a void. It is cast to the grave of the forgotten, the oblivion of ideas. It is not the first. It will not be the last.

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Hm. There is not a man here.