Albert

“Did you notice I seem to be aging at an accelerated rate. I can’t figure it out. I don’t remember these furrows in my brow yesterday. Were they there, or have I just not been paying attention?”

“What else would be new. You tend to forget what century it is when you are busy playing with those theories of yours. I ask you to pick something up from the store, and you bring me the equation necessary to calculate the likelihood of their being life in other solar systems. Your mind has a mind of its own, you know that don’t you.”

It isn’t that I live in a different universe than the majority of people, or am attempting to ignore the simplicity that surrounds us. It is just that everything fascinates me. It is like an addiction. I find the answer to one thing and then I can’t stop. I have to find the answer for the answer, if that makes any sense. I think it is because everything is related to everything else and it is necessary if I am to answer one question, that I answer all questions. 

She thinks I just pretend to not notice what goes on around me, the “real world,” as she calls it. What else is there but the real world. I can fantasize as well as the next person about the spiritual nature of things, but that is conjecture, not fact. If we are to invent our own facts, then we are destined to reach conclusions founded in mysticism, because they cannot be explained, proven. 

But I’m off again, as she says, getting excited about the absurdity of what we accept as reality, when we don’t know what reality consists of. We look at an apple, even take a bite, and we say to ourselves, it is an apple. Yes, but what kind of apple. There are hundreds of varieties, each unique in its own way and to lump them together to facilitate our lack of interest is an a front to apples. They have spent thousands of years becoming what they are, and we dismiss them because they are numerous. Too numerous to take seriously?  And yet given the choice between a crab apple and its inherent tartness, and an Appalachian Queen, we choose the Queen because it satisfies us, satisfies a desire, but not the reason why it is a better apple, but because it appeases one of our senses.

I know none of this knowledge has anything to do with most people, but I fear that is the problem. The majority of people take things for granted. The expect things to be what they are, because that is all they have known. They can’t conceive of a time when something like a tomato was considered poisonous, or pickles distorted your speech. I can’t even imagine where these notions come from. 

I understand that the reason I have a need to find out how and why things work, is overwhelming to a lot of people. It is far easier to spend time appreciating the suns warmth and light, than attempting to decipher how. I have been plagued by the questions that most don’t seem to see or feel all around them. 

There have been others who have suffered through this obsession with questions and answers. Galileo, Nostradamus, even the Wright Brothers, and their flying machine. All seeking to find what something is, and why it does what it does. I know there has to be more to life than finding answers, but it is inconceivable to me to stop looking. 

“Here let me help you with that.” She is like that. Treats me like a child. Perhaps she is right to do so. At times I can’t remember where I am or where I’m supposed to be. I get lost in the hypothetical equations that fall from the sky like snowflakes, no two assumed to be alike. Too many variations in temperature and altitude. 

“If you pull that thread, as you are about to do, you may experience a result you have not anticipated. The great Albert standing on the street with only one leg on his pants.”

One leg of my pants possibly gone because of a thread. A string of threads binding together to form cloth. What an amazing revelation. 

Suppose everything in the universe was held together by a series of connecting threads that we can’t see because we haven’t looked. I am sure there are questions that may not have answers yet, but who knows. Once you begin to pull on one thread and see where it leads it may lead to other threads and after we are capable of placing them in a consequential order, we have a universe. Not a one-pantleg universe, but a complete universe that we can understand.

I can only imagine how long that will take, but then apples, no matter the story or origin, didn’t fall from the tree because they had nothing better to do. 

“Don’t, Don’t, I can see it in your eye. That twinkle is not as indiscernible as you believe, and I do not plan on spending the rest of my day mending your inquisitive nature, not to mention your pants.”

She can’t seem to understand that the journey into the unknown often times leaves disastrous results. This nonsense with the Atomic Bomb is a case in point. Once you have allowed the Genie out of the bottle, it is impossible to coax it back in. Men are prone to exploit power for their own advantage, no matter the cost. This particular Genie has the potential to consume not only their vanity, but the universe we hope to more fully understand.

You see, we are no longer analyzing a process, but engineering components of it to utilize a power reserved for the sun, or God, if you will. Believing in prayer is one thing. Answering requests by manipulating elements of a physical or psychological nature to produce a desired result, suggests you are either playing at being God, or are insane.

Understanding how something works, or wondering why it does, is not the same as picking and choosing the elements necessary to distort the natural evolution, only time can provide. 

“Albert, you are going to have to do something about your hair. You are frightening the children in the neighborhood. They believe you have escaped from some fairy tale.”

“Yes, dear. But you see it has to do with the biological make up of…