All the Feels: Day 4 at Bridges

For my last blog post of the conference, I don't want to focus on individual moments I gleaned from speakers, or mathematical gems I acquired. Instead, I want to take the time to talk about something that infuses everything I do, and that is feeling.

Yesterday, I was speaking with one of the poets at the conference as we were getting ready to read our parts in a play together. I mentioned that sometimes the thing that seems to be missing from some of the mathematical art is feeling. I felt that there were a lot of explanations using equations and calculations, but I was missing the feeling behind it. I don't mean that I thought the people creating the work didn't feel anything. I think I was looking for something I could recognize as feeling.

The first speaker of the day was Matt Zucker, who talked about creating a squiggle sphere (Zucker, 2026). He said it was suggest that he should have called it a "squigglier sphere," and that led him to wonder what the squiggliest sphere could actually be. I loved that progression, playful and mathematical at once — one little thought leading to another question.

Matt talked about mathematical art being like a good riddle, where finding the underlying pieces is fun and figuring out how something is made is part of the experience. He described these things as invitations into conversations.

Looking back, I think that playfulness was its own kind of feeling, one I didn't recognize in the moment because I was listening for something else. I had been so focused on finding passion or awe that I missed the feeling of delight sitting right in front of me, dressed up as a riddle.

That made me think about something else that had been happening for me during the conference. There were times when I wasn't able to speak the language well enough to be part of the conversation. Sometimes I felt like I was standing just outside it, trying to work out how to join in. But perhaps that's okay. I don't need to know the language already. I can keep learning new things. I can stay curious. I can accept the invitation.

Another speaker, Amy Wendt, talked about her work with modular kirigami knitting (Wendt, 2026). She began by saying that she sometimes worries what she is doing isn't "pure math," but that it is mathematics with a purpose. That really made me think. Here was someone doing extraordinary mathematical work and still wondering if it counted the way it was supposed to count. It doesn't seem to matter who you are or how accomplished you are — there are still moments when we doubt ourselves.

It's funny how, watching someone else do something amazing, you can barely believe they could feel that way about themselves. Yet when it comes to ourselves, it's so easy to fall into that same imposter feeling.

The day ended with poetry, and it was there that everything from the day seemed to gather itself up. The poetry reading showcased work that was varied and absolutely beautiful. Then the poet I'd spoken with the day before stood up to read her own work. Before she began, she referenced our conversation, and spoke about how she feels about mathematics, about the particular area of mathematics she works in. I wish I had recorded exactly what she said, because at the time I thought I would remember it forever, and I don't. What I remember is the feeling of listening to her. She was so passionate about her mathematics, and there was such happiness in the way she talked about it. She was speaking to everyone in the room, but she was also, in a way, speaking back to me.

This made me think about how much perspective really is everything. I had been thinking about feeling as if there was one particular kind of feeling I should be able to see in mathematical art, when actually there are probably as many ways of feeling about mathematics as there are ways of doing mathematics. For her, it was passion and happiness. For someone else it might be awe, or curiosity, or frustration, or the satisfaction of finally seeing a pattern. When I think back to the first times I was trying to solve a mathematical puzzle and suddenly started to see patterns, I remember that feeling too. I didn't always know why things were working or what I was doing, but I knew I found it fascinating and beautiful. That was feeling. I think I lost sight of that at parts of this conference, and I'm so glad that somehow, through that conversation and then hearing her speak, that understanding was given back to me.

There was one other poet whose work made me unexpectedly emotional, and I found myself thinking again about how much feeling there really was in that room. It wasn't just that the poems were clever or mathematically interesting. They made me feel something.

But I don't want to limit this idea of feeling to poetry, because I don't think that's fair either. I would like to spend more time talking to mathematicians and mathematical artists about the feeling. What does it feel like when you discover something? What does it feel like when a pattern suddenly appears? What does it feel like when you finally understand something you've been working on? I'm wondering if we ask those questions enough, or if people who are deeply mathematical assume that everybody already knows what that feeling is, because they experience it themselves.

I thought about all of this again as I was waiting to be one of the last poets to read. I realized I didn't need to get up there and apologize for who I was. I didn't need to apologize for the length of my poems, or the content, or for being someone who had never written and shared a poem at a conference before. All I needed to do was get up there, share something from my heart, be vulnerable, and try something new.

And I have to say, it felt really good.

It was the first time I had ever written and shared a poem. I read it in front of poets who have published their work, in front of supportive classmates, and in front of a supportive teacher. I had been thinking all day about people wondering whether their work was "math enough," and here I was doing my own version of the same thing. Was my poem good enough? Did it belong here? Did I belong here?

Then I thought, maybe those weren't actually the questions I needed to answer. I had written something. I had something I wanted to share. So I got up and shared it.

Looking back over the conference, I think everyone in that room, and everyone at Bridges, has been a teacher. A teacher to each other. A teacher to me. A teacher about process, about making, about asking questions, about how to join and belong in a community. Teachers who reminded us to take risks, to try something new, and to step outside our comfort zones.

I take all of this forward with me as I continue in my career. I want to remember to take risks, to think outside the box, to share my knowledge with others, and to encourage a sense that not knowing is okay, in both my students and my colleagues. I want to remember that mathematics can be beautiful and surprising and frustrating and joyful. I want to remember that there isn't one way to experience mathematics, just as there isn't one way to do mathematics, or one way to belong.

I came to Bridges thinking I was coming to learn about mathematics and art. I am leaving with something much bigger — with questions, with new ways of seeing, with a renewed willingness to try things I haven't tried before, and with a reminder that feeling has been part of my mathematical story all along.

Perhaps I didn't need to find the feeling here. Perhaps I needed to remember that I had been carrying it with me all along.

References

Wendt, A. (2026). Modular kirigami knitting [Conference presentation]. Bridges 2026: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Education, Culture, Galway, Ireland.

Zucker, M. (2026). Reaction-diffusion Truchet tiles [Conference presentation]. Bridges 2026: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Education, Culture, Galway, Ireland.