“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” ~ Og Mandino

M51 Spiral Galaxy (Purple Dots are Black Holes), NASA picture 

 

“Stars, in your multitude, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light.” ~ From Les Miserables

“For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the swiftness of their daring play” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Artist’s Depiction of Black Hole from seedmagazine.com

Don’t misunderstand. I love what I call the mystery of life, the continuous ebb and flow of the lifestream upon which we all move. I love how life intrudes and intercepts, provides moments of beautiful grace, complete surprise, even unexpected sadness. All of these things, these emotions and episodes are what make us human, which is why when I find myself just moving along without any real sense of purpose, I feel so terribly disconnected.

During these times, I am unable to read because I cannot focus. Writing is hard because I have to search so hard for words that normally flow with ease from my fingertips to the page. I find myself lying in bed, watching movies without really paying attention, ignoring telephone calls, allowing my e-mail to go unread for days at a time.

And the worst part is that these moments come upon me unannounced more often than not. There is no single precipitating event, no confrontations, no arguments, no bad news. Rather, it’s the absolute nothingness that seizes upon me and leaves me feeling adrift.

“Though my soul may set in darkness. It will rise in perfect light, I have loved the stars too fondly To be fearful of the night.” ~ Sarah Williams, from “The Old Astronomer to his Pupil”

Depiction of Black Hole (gwu.edu)

I’m not talking about being depressed, about my incipient lows over which I have little to no control. This is something different. It’s not sadness, not an ache, not even emotional pain. It’s nothingness, which sometimes, is much worse.

It feels like a black hole, that space phenomenon that exudes massive gravitational pull. When an object becomes sufficiently compact, like a dying star, a black hole is formed, a region of nothingness in space. A black hole is cut off from the rest of space time.That’s how my emotional nothingness feels: as if I have been cut off from regular time, like I am standing off to the side, watching everything that is going on, but not participating, not interacting.

I know that as with everything else in my life, I will work my way out of this. Unlike the matter that is sucked into the black hole and moves inexorably towards the Event Horizon, I am not being pulled helplessly. For me, it’s just a matter of time. For me, it could be something as simply as getting a good night’s sleep and awaking without a headache.

Let me leave you with the beautiful words of poet Mary Oliver. More later. Peace.

 

The Spirit Likes to Dress Up

~ by Mary Oliver


 
The spirit
  likes to dress up like this:
    ten fingers,
      ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
  at night
    in the black branches,
      in the morning

in the blue branches
  of the world.
    It could float, of course,
      but would rather

plumb rough matter.
  Airy and shapeless thing,
    it needs
      the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
  the oceanic fluids;
    it needs the body's world,
      instinct

and imagination
  and the dark hug of time,
    sweetness
      and tangibility,

to be understood,
  to be more than pure light
    that burns
      where no one is --

so it enters us --
  in the morning
    shines from brute comfort
      like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
  lights up the deep and wondrous
    drownings of the body
      like a star.

“Imagination is More Important Than Knowledge” ~ Albert Einstein

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” – A. Einstein

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” – A. Einstein

Mona Lisa as Golden Ratio

I have always wished that I could appreciate the beauty of pure mathematics in the same way that brilliant mathematicians and physicists do. Truly. I was reminded of this last night when I watched a special on one of my lifelong heroes, Albert Einstein.

For people like Einstein, mathematics is art. Numbers on a page are akin to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” In fact, the “Mona Lisa,” was painted based on a mathematical premise known as the Golden Ratio:

The Golden Ratio, also known as the Golden Number or the Golden Section, is defined as the ratio of the lengths of the two sides of any Golden Rectangle. That is, if you take a Golden Rectangle and divide the length by the height, you will have the Golden Ratio. Traditionally, mathematicians have denoted the Golden Ratio by the Greek letter phi (φ). (http://library.thinkquest.org/27890/goldenRatio2.html)

Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as a Renaissance man because of his integration of art and science. He is not only famous for his paintings and sculpture, but also for his drawings, such as “The Vitruvian Man,” as well as his sketches of a flying machine, a hang glider, and numerous studies of human anatomy, all based on mathematical and physical principles of angles, lines, arcs, and relational gravity.

Of course, da Vinci was predated by the Greek Archimedes, whose studies in mathematics and physics are thought to be the origins of pi as well as the principles of the lever. Archimedes was working around 250 B.C. in Sicily. Then, of course, following da Vinci, was Galileo, who was perhaps the first to posit that the laws of nature were dictated by math. In The Assayer, Galileo stated that “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe … It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei).

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – A. Einstein

Yitruvian Man

But getting back to Einstein, this man spent almost a decade on his General Theory of Relativity (not to be confused with his theory of relativity), which he presented in 1916. This was the subject of the show that I watched last night. What I found the most amazing about the entire show was how this man with the beginnings of his wild hair would fill pages and pages with these long equations and know, just know that they were incorrect. But then I tried to relate his equations to words, and in a way it made sense to me. His numbers were a writer’s words. His numbers had their own elegance and truth for him. They were truth.

He could look at a page of numbers and see something larger. I can stare at a page of numbers, equations, and see absolutely nothing, I mean, absolutely nothing. That has always made me feel stupid: the way in which numbers come alive for some people. I know that it is a brain function thing: some people work with one side of their brain; other people work with the other side of their brain. And then there are some people, like da Vinci, who manage to tap into both sides of their brain and encompass all of it. That is what I have always been so jealous of: I want to tap into both sides of my brain. I want to work with words, and I want to see the beauty of numbers so that I can look at space and see not just the beauty of the stars, but also the beauty of reaching the stars.

“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.” – A. Einstein

I have read countless articles on how human beings only use a very small portion of their brain function, that scientists are always looking for ways to open up that untapped potential. It’s the stuff of sci-fi horror movies—The Manchurian Candidate and others, depositing information into that unused portion of the brain only to have it come alive at some later time, usually inconvenient to real life, but great for the plot line. But you know that there are individuals who have tapped into part of that potential. We have seen and heard about them all throughout time, and they have come from all walks of life: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Alexander the Great, Dante, Beethoven, Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Dorothea Lange, Le Corbusier, Bill Gates, Mozart, etc.

They are people who have achieved greatness in different fields for different reasons. I have only named a minute few. They have contributed in great ways and in horrible ways to our history because they have had the ability to see beyond the here and now. They have had the ability to tap into just that small part of their brains that most people use. They have melded the words with the numbers to put it into the crudest possible sense. In other words, they have touched greatness and changed the world and changed history.

Granted, Einstein was myopic when it came to his work. He had very little time for his family. He did, however pay attention to events around him. He was a pacifist, and he hated the events of WWI and the participation of colleagues of whom he had once greatly sought respect and admiration. He was very certain that his ideas were correct, so certain in fact, that he bartered for a divorce from his first wife on the condition that when he won the Nobel Prize, she could have the money if she would grant him a divorce. His biggest concern was getting what he wanted when he wanted it and being allowed to do as he wished. But no one who worked with him doubted his dedication or his genius.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – A. Einstein

Which takes us back to general relativity and one of my favorite concepts: an event horizon. Somehow, and don’t stick me on the particulars because I won’t even pretend to understand it all, when an object becomes sufficiently compact, general relativity predicts the formation of a black hole, a region of nothingness in space. In general relativity no material body can catch up with or overtake a light pulse. The study of spacetime is called global geometry.

Now, as I understand it, using global geometry, some boundaries can be identified, and these boundaries are called horizons, and a black hole is one of these horizons because it is cut off from the rest of space time (bear with me here, I think that I’m almost there). There are other types of horizons in the universe because the universe expands. Horizons from the past are called particle horizons and cannot be observed. Horizons from the future cannot be influenced and are called Event Horizons! I finally understand the term. I really do. How cool is that?

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.” – A. Einstein

So while I look at a painting such as Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” and I may not see the Golden Mean, and I cannot appreciate the culture of pi and the fact that people spend time trying to carry it out beyond a trillion digits or why this is important, I don’t discount the art involved in this pursuit. As to myself, I am gloriously appreciative of the fact that somehow I have come just a little bit closer to understanding the mathematical definition of what an Event Horizon is, although I know that in actuality, I probably haven’t.

I do know that space and time are on another dimension, one that I cannot comprehend, just as I cannot truly comprehend the space between quarks. The closest that I have ever come was how it was explained in the movie “The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension,” which made complete sense to me” . . . perhaps because it was visual and utterly nonsensical.

Ah well.  Just remember, “no matter where you go, there you are.” More later. Peace.