This post brought to you by Barry, for his girlfriend Madeline.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
– excerpt, T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Notation key:
A ⇒ B: if A, then B
A ⇔ B: if and only if A, then B
A ∧ B: A and B
A ∨ B: A or B
¬A: not A
A = What are the roots that clutch
B = What branches grow
C = Stony rubbish
D = A heap of broken images
E = The sun beats
F = The dead tree
G = Shelter
H = The cricket
I = Relief
J = The dry stone
K = Sound of water
L = There is shadow
M = This red rock
N = Come in under the shadow of
O = Your shadow at morning striding behind you
P = Your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
Q = Fear in a handful of dust
Given:
D
D ⇒ E ∧ (F ⇒ ¬G) ∧ (H ⇒ ¬I) ∧ (J ⇒ ¬K)
M ⇔ L
(N ∧ M) ⇒ ¬(O ∨ P) ∧ Q
Solve for:
C ⇒ (A ∧ B)
Solution:
Answer cannot be determined
Julia Hayton did not receive an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2008. Her unwritten short story "Flügelhorn Blues" was not published in the New Yorker in 2011 and was not short-listed for a Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award. You can follow her on Twitter. She does not live in Brooklyn.