the year of physics
a skull is thin and hard. our human foundations snap quite easily and decay. we saw you lying on that rock. your hair was grey, your coat was grey. the rock was grey. you were looking up. you were seeing a flat grey sky.
what did your mind play out on that empty screen that filled your vision?
were you seeing blank, hard planes?
did you hear the thudding of the helicopter?
did you feel the waves splashing at your boot?
did you feel yourself turning cold?
we could barely see you. from where we were standing -our hot red hearts pulling apart in our sweatered chests- you looked like yet another rock in the jagged graggy jumble crashing against hard, cold, salty sea.
geology is unimpressed.
we soft brief creatures may squall and squeal, but water and rock only love one another. rock boils and cools, morphing with long slow alchemy. water crashes and caresses, evaporates and freezes, digs and polishes and carves weathered faces into rock. water plays silly games, seeps into soil, and swells into the bubbles of biology, forming a fast, thin slime that fuzzes and fizzes on the surface of the planet. rock has no patience for little slimes. water and rock roll together, touch and spray. they tell long stories that fuel times arrow with catastrophe.
all the while, elementary particles inhabit space-time. if there were such a thing as a vessel, it would be bursting with tiny pulls and pushes, intertwined behaviors, spins and charges, strong force, weak force, electricity, and the constand unmotivated action of something that is - "is" as in "be"- that is being, that we cannot really know because we only think with fleshy minds that marinate in meanings as if there must be a reason why things "are" as opposed to "are not".
so when you "fell" from the footpath, the tragedy of you lying broken on wet rocks, grey and pale, was ours alone. our sagging physiology cramped with temporal grief. eyes wetted, tears rolled down our cheeks. we curled up into balls at night and sobbed. water and salt passed through us, collected from the coast where we watched them take up our body, poured out later onto pillows, absorbed into towels and dried off by the fire.
your note was white and black. a page of paper could say nothing. your stark ink made statements, and we injected them into our murky minds. you said "dear ones," and we reeled. you said "this is the year of physics." and it is, that's true.
albert einstein announced his genius one hundred years ago. a hundred years is a long time for a packet of human culture to work on projects. we have gotten a lot done. you say "my work has ended. i can no longer think of things i cannot know."
our knuckles whiten. hard little thoughts clank together like small stones.
what did your mind play out on that empty screen that filled your vision?
were you seeing blank, hard planes?
did you hear the thudding of the helicopter?
did you feel the waves splashing at your boot?
did you feel yourself turning cold?
we could barely see you. from where we were standing -our hot red hearts pulling apart in our sweatered chests- you looked like yet another rock in the jagged graggy jumble crashing against hard, cold, salty sea.
geology is unimpressed.
we soft brief creatures may squall and squeal, but water and rock only love one another. rock boils and cools, morphing with long slow alchemy. water crashes and caresses, evaporates and freezes, digs and polishes and carves weathered faces into rock. water plays silly games, seeps into soil, and swells into the bubbles of biology, forming a fast, thin slime that fuzzes and fizzes on the surface of the planet. rock has no patience for little slimes. water and rock roll together, touch and spray. they tell long stories that fuel times arrow with catastrophe.
all the while, elementary particles inhabit space-time. if there were such a thing as a vessel, it would be bursting with tiny pulls and pushes, intertwined behaviors, spins and charges, strong force, weak force, electricity, and the constand unmotivated action of something that is - "is" as in "be"- that is being, that we cannot really know because we only think with fleshy minds that marinate in meanings as if there must be a reason why things "are" as opposed to "are not".
so when you "fell" from the footpath, the tragedy of you lying broken on wet rocks, grey and pale, was ours alone. our sagging physiology cramped with temporal grief. eyes wetted, tears rolled down our cheeks. we curled up into balls at night and sobbed. water and salt passed through us, collected from the coast where we watched them take up our body, poured out later onto pillows, absorbed into towels and dried off by the fire.
your note was white and black. a page of paper could say nothing. your stark ink made statements, and we injected them into our murky minds. you said "dear ones," and we reeled. you said "this is the year of physics." and it is, that's true.
albert einstein announced his genius one hundred years ago. a hundred years is a long time for a packet of human culture to work on projects. we have gotten a lot done. you say "my work has ended. i can no longer think of things i cannot know."
our knuckles whiten. hard little thoughts clank together like small stones.