Imagine, if you will, a room.

This room is a study, a room of books and chairs and shelves. The books along the walls, the knickknacks on the windowsill, the rug on the floor, even the bushes visible through the window represent, incarnate, make manifest the owner's tastes and preferences.

One of the things that the room shows clearly is that the owner has a passion for symbols, and things related to them: languages and alphabets and writing and semiotics and so on, and prominently the four 'M's: mythology, mathematics, music and metaphor.

In fact, if the owner of this room were a superhero, why, he'd have to have a skintight suit and boots and cape, with, what else, a symbol on the front. In his case, a large "M" suits his fancy (and fancies up his suit), and not just for his Midnight Multitasking . . .

But enough talk. Let us go across the waters to this room. Take my hand.

You take my hand, and we begin moving, rapidly picking up speed. A faint, high whistling can be heard. We are moving so fast that our surroundings blur, and we go through obstacles rather than around them. Finally we rise up and, passing through a few large objects too indistinct to make out, find ourselves in what indeed appears to be a study.