On top of mountains, if you are real lucky, and real quiet, you can feel the earth spinning and spiraling through space. If you are real quiet, and real lucky, you can feel your atoms spiraling and spinning through space. If you are real lucky, and real quiet, with your eyes all wide open as big as you can get them, you can see all of life curling and flowering in upon itself, away from the center of things that is death, and away from the edge of things that is death, and toward here, right now, which is life.
These aren’t metaphors. The earth really is spinning. Your atoms too. Life, all of it, whatever it may be at its base, really is the universe’s best attempt of building in the face of collapse, of dreaming in the space of sleep, of collecting as all else disperses, of laughing as all else sighs.
I do not care for mysticism. I believe in science, the real heartwood of it: the way of seeking out the real shape of the world. This seeking requires imagination and courage and humility. Because we are wrong. Most of the time. The world will correct us, over and again. We can learn, though, and build, and dream, and collect, and laugh, and hope.
And these things, these are what will keep use from drifting away to a less-living world, out toward a quiet universe of sleep and sighs.
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To read more of my writing, and to learn what else I’m up to, visit my website: www.alexandtheuniverse.com.
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