The idea that there is a philosophical quality to math is one that I can almost grasp but, even at a remove, find thrilling.
I stand by the criticisms I marshaled across the last year and more, but watching him reach out to almost, almost, grasp the prize this month, it feels like we didn't give him enough credit for the things that he did right.
Presque vu, sequentially related to déjà vu, is to almost grasp, like something on the tip of the tongue - could be an attempt to describe Vital's ever-lengthening antennae: a tongue that desires to taste that which can never be completely known.
One of my favorite concepts in the book is the notion that poetry stretches out "to almost grasp what feels like an unstated truth" and in doing so makes "meaning by failing to fully make meaning". But is that unique to poetry?
Reach out...you can almost grasp it... Turn on the light.
He almost grasped it a year ago, but Ergen stepped in with a richer bid.
Now, he says, human heart regeneration is "something we can almost grasp". And the introduction of more and more of those fluorescent proteins make the fish more and more useful.
"To be on the podium winning the first American medal of these Olympics is almost more than I can grasp right now.
With all my strength I was really trying to get that performance in my grasp, [but] I almost felt like I'd lost before I'd started.
He writes that "it was only now that I began to grasp the almost mathematical precision with which America's race and class problems joined; the depth, the ferocity, of resulting tribal wars; the bile that flowed freely not just out on the streets but in the stalls of Columbia's bathrooms as well," where the graffiti was both racist and anti-Semitic.
"The niceties of federal practice have to go second to the compelling needs of people to get a recovery that is almost, almost, almost within their grasp".
