“Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit”

I watch documentaries. They tell me things like,

“The Universe is 17 billion years old.”

They make vague analogies and models

to support these claims, and fit it all into

an hour format for PBS or whomever.

A cabal of astrophysicists meet in secret

and decide, in presumptive but elaborate and

esoteric equations how it all works so that

that they can publish these findings.

And who will know the difference?

Ex nihilo nihil fit. One of my favorite expressions.

It means, in Latin, “From nothing nothing comes.”

Something cannot come from Nothing. Well, for me

it's a problem. It is the nagging question which pervades

my days and nights. It prompts the question I can not answer.

What is the Universe in?

I'm not disciplined to study thoroughly what may,

without guarantee, lead me to answers or more questions.

I'm also heartbroken. I thought about seeking solace in a wat,

but let's be real. I'm an iconoclastic bastard, not a monk.

Life, with a divine entity or without, breaks my heart.

The selfishness, cruelty, inconsideration of my modern

fellows breaks my heart. I dream of an island, and a muse,

a beautiful girl who wants to have my children and I

do things like fish and hunt wild boars. It's an empty dream.

Gauguin went to Tahiti to paint. Now there are seven billion

people living on this planet. So few places to hide. Call me

a coward, but that is exactly what I want to do: hide. When

the doctors tell me I'm mentally ill, I have to ask, “Isn't that

very much appropriate?” Death would be better than the lives of 95%.

Funafuti 8°31'S 179°13'E … unlikely

Nanumea 05°41'S 176°09'E … unlikely

Nui 07°13'29"S 177°09'37"E... unlikely

Nukufetau 08°00'S 178°22'E … unlikely

Nukulaelae 09°22'52"S 179°51'08"E … unlikely

Vaitupu 07°28'S 178°41'E … unlikely

They found what they believe to be some of Gauguin's teeth

in Tahiti. Like the life preserved as it was stopped by Pompeii in '79.

I can't know if Gauguin was happy, no matter how young

and how preserved the girls were from the institutions of shame.

But he did it. He said it, which often is a curse, and then did it.

My escape from this particular suburb of Dis will have to be different.

I will have to steal away into the night, with a backpack full of socks,

underwear, and some cash. I will require the same faith

that I seem to have lost along the way. I will have to let the judgments

of others slip off me the way rain does down and umbrella, or a raincoat.

So, while I draw up prototypes for tinfoil-lined umbrellas,

(so as to keep them from their mind reading / controlling rays)

in doing so, I keep my head full of broken heart above the water,

the waves which will drown me, I bend time. No, I don't bend it, I bide it.

If I could bend time, I'd be up to much more scintillating endeavors.

It will be me in this 17 billion year old Universe, for a fleeting millionth of a second

seeking that relief, that transcendental drunk from a wine fomented from grapes

grown on the vines of absurdity. In Judaism, there is a tenet that we (humans)

will never know god's face. Einstein, with his shock of hair, antennae for the cosmos,

said prophetically, “I want to know god's thoughts. The rest are details.”

The Devil in me. The Daniel Webster I aspire to be. These are at odds.

17 billion years ago, let's just say they're right. The “Big Bang” happened.

Great. So, please tell me, what was there before that big bang.

And if you say something like it was super-dense compaction blah blah blah, please

tell me it was a super-dense compaction of WHAT? And what before that!?

The stars whisper secrets. They have for longer than we were around to see them.

They whisper about dreams, and wishes, and to astronomers, they whisper about time,

but they mock me in symbol. Their very presence says “We see you, hahaha!”

Like peepholes for the superspatial beings. I know that creatures such as us,

who can't see, for the most part, our hand in front of our faces, can't answer these questions.

However, the questions remain. So, if I go to the Large Hadron Collider, and,

with some silver tongue explain my broken heart,

manage to get them to explain the whole thing to me, I can leave mended.

Perhaps I can get a job at the post office and a mortgage.

Love is in the Large Hadron Collider, baby. But only for a millionth of a second. Then it's gone.

par Giosue ben Dawell