A book about haiku I’m reading for school says that haiku is different from other forms of written art because while other forms have to be read through, and the experience is gradually built up, haiku is short enough that it can be experienced instantaneously. It does take a few moments to read it, but where with an eight or even four line poem you get one half and then the next, with a haiku you read the entire thing, then the seeing it comes all at once.
I realized today that math gives you both the gradual, drawn out experience of a longer poem or novel and the instant experience of a haiku at once. A proof may take a while to go through, building up step by step, but when you’re left with, say, aⁿ + bⁿ ≠ cⁿ, you have that same instantaneous understanding as with a haiku.
Math is so beautiful.