Warning: nerdy physics-y romanticism follows. Also, amateurish philosophy.
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I asked a question at the beginning of Icelollys. Am I alone in the world?
I think the answer is “yes.”
Yes, I’m alone because I’m an atom. We all are. Indivisible. Separate and discrete, vibrating through the universe, defined by unity. Lots of other atoms are around though, jiggling through time and space, doing their own atomic thing.
This particular atom has had a desire to fuse, to join with another atom, to know what other atoms are really like, up close. To feel what it’s like to be another atom. At least one other atom, anyway.
Friends and others told me I shouldn’t want that. If I fused, I wouldn’t be the same atom anymore. I’d give up my atomic nature in a little, tiny, mushroom cloud of thermonuclear fusion. I’d become something else entirely. I didn’t care. I still feel that way, but now I am seeing that it’s just not very likely. The odds of any two atoms colliding and fusing are low, low.
So, this trip has a slightly different meta-goal.
I, like everyone else, will have to be content with trying to understand what other atoms are like, and if I’m a lucky little atom, to connect. Atoms linked together, temporarily, electron clouds fuzzing together for a time. A flash of friendship, an understanding, a shared romantic feeling, a meeting of the minds…
Maybe I’m alone in the world, but I can try to understand others and to make bonds where I can.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Madam, I'm Atom
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2 comments:
I am not the weepy sort, but reading this did make me so.
I felt the need to further explain.
I believe that individuals cross our path so we can help them grow, while others are there to help us grow.
I recently met a man. This meeting was not a physical meeting, for that had ten years prior occurred. Instead, it was, and continues to be, a meeting of emotion.
I consider myself old fashioned in many ways, not wanting to succumb to purchasing every new gadget on the market and, although I celebrate communication, do not always bless non-verbal means of doing so, until now. The re-meeting of this man has changed that for me, because we have met again through these very gadgets that I often loath.
Several years, changes in jobs, and distance came between us ever knowing each other well, if at all. We only reconnected again a few months back. Since, we have seen each other in pictures that only vaguely help us remember who we were when we initially met. Not being able to see each other physically doesn’t matter right now. Up until this week, we have exchanged niceties via email; perhaps a bit more intimate than what you might at a cocktail party. But that awkward re-acquaintance and stab at trying to find similarities of mind, hindered by the insecurity and vulnerability that comes with getting to know one another, doesn’t matter right now either. What matters is that this man has captured in words what I have felt for a lifetime and yet not been able to articulate because I have been too busy thinking. Upon reading those words, his words, I sobbed and in those words we connected. I never thought anyone on this planet could touch the depths of what I feel. These words, your words, did that Greg!
I am unsure as to whether I am crossing your path to help you grow or you have recently frequented my path to help me grow. Regardless, I thank you for sharing your journey with me so I may know your thoughts and feelings, and you will know mine. You have so deeply touched me as no other person has!! I secretly hope that rather than only one of us growing, we each can grow and touch each other’s lives for a long time to come.
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