Strange and Charm

Strange and Charm

nothing

what is nothing

then……

something

where did it come from

splinters of matter dark light swirls spirals orbits something invisible essential

let there be 

let there be light

let there be tendrils and filaments

let there be violent collisions and fragments

let there be gasses and chemistry

physics

quarks and gluons

muons

immensity intensity unknowable insanity

the glory and terror

the beginning

imagine imagine the birth of stars

Tia walks into a room. A dark room that has been hard to find

There is something of power in shards of memory. What would happen if 

those shards were glued together. What?

Kit looks at screens and scrolling numbers. His head aches

things begin

things end

somewhere there is an in between

There is a white cat. She has ginger eyebrows and a ginger tail. She is sitting in a window, watching the rain.

an axis of spacetime

systems in flux

nothing is still

to be truly still is to die

Question - What is reality? Reality is DNA. Reality is love. Reality is life. Reality is fucked up. 

Does anyone care?

Once upon a time there was an egg. It was fertilised and grew. It became an embryo, a foetus, a baby. It was born. The egg/embryo/foetus.baby was welcomed and loved, so it grew and flourished and worried and cried and laughed and was brave and happy. Mostly.

Information - Every breath you take was previously breathed out by someone else. Ghengis Khan, Boudicca, Galileo, Cleopatra. Pick your favourite and inhale.

There’s a tree, an ancient tree. It’s in a park in a churchyard in East London. It’s home to insects and moss. It’s a shady sanctuary for the drunks who lie under it’s canopy in the summer. It’s mentioned by tour guides. It is beautiful.

Neutrinos pass through Kit, the cat, the baby, the tree, Tia, invisible and undetectable, hurtling through the centre of the earth and out the other side and on into limitless space, stars, planets, asteroids. Aliens?

Information - Tia is in Australia. Kit is in England. They are 10,559.57 miles apart.

Kit drinks tea and sighs.

Meanwhile the quantum world carries on unaffected. At Cern particles are accelerated to 99,999999.1% of the speed of light. 

a train passes through the Scottish highlands

a bird sings on the roof of a Japanese Temple

a dangerous, damaged, damned teenager shoots children in the USA

an elderly woman opens a letter in Columbia

huge crowds march for justice in Johannesburg

there are wars, there is peace

the world continues to turn

Tia reads, thinks and types. This is important. She wants to get it right. it is 6am.

Kit has finished his tea and is on his way home. It is 7pm.

Both of these things are happening at the same time.

A hundred years ago the world was recovering from the Spanish flu. The pandemic killed 50 million people.

Eileen sits in the chair by the window. She just watches. Speech deserted her a week ago, aeons ago. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to stare at the television. It makes no sense. The tree sings to her.

Information - there are approximately 86 billion neurons in the adult human   brain.

Information - a light year is 186,000 miles.

Quantum Entanglement happens when more than one particles is generated, they interact, or share spatial proximity. The quantum state of each particle in the group cannot be described independently from the state of the others. This even applies when the particles are very very far apart.

Interesting. Complicated. Relevant? Einstein didn’t like it - called it ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Ummm.

spooky

A fox slinks through a London park. She is hungry. Under a tree she finds the remains of a burger, a piece of cheese. She eats.

Information - The night sky is different for Tia and Kit. Kit can see Orion. Tia can see it too, but upside down. Tia can see the Southern Cross and the Jewel Basket. Kit can see The Plough and Cassiopeia. 

Information - London - population around nine point five million

Information - Australia - population around twenty six million

Information - London, area - 671 square miles

Information - Australia, area - 2,941,300 square miles

Quarks. A quark is a basic and fundamental elementary particle and constituent of matter. Everything is made of quarks.Quarks have electric charge, mass, colour charge and spin. There are six types of quark; up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom. None of that means what you think it does. They are the building blocks of everything. You are made of quarks. Tia is made of quarks. Kit is made of quarks. London is made of quarks. Australia is made of quarks. This shit is crazy.

The lights come on in the dark room and Tia steps towards the desk that is now visible. She sits. Turns on the laptop.

Information - Five hundred years ago:

Henry VIII invaded France

The Shang Dynasty began

Pope Adrian the Sixth died

The galaxy kept on turning

Fragments, fragments upon fragments. Are they leading somewhere, these pieces of story, of fundamentals, of particles and people?

Information - Kangaroo - marsupial from the family Macropodidae. Red kangaroos can travel at 43.5 miles per hour. They eat grass, leaves, ferns, flowers, fruit and moss.

It is snowing in London

It is not snowing in Australia

The white cat with the ginger tail is hunting. The smell of mouse is strong in the twilight garden. 

A meteor falls over a small Chinese town. There are prophecies of doom. There is excitement and awe.

Information - There are between 200 and 400 billion stars in the milky way.

Question - What happens when opposites collide? Annihilation? Combination? 

There is an old song ‘to everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn.’ The wheel of the year is turning. The wheel of life is turning. There are too many wheels on the London street, cars with engines turning, churning out noise/pollution/envy. Kit turns up his collar and finds smaller streets, less dense with distraction. 

Information - A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.  A CO2 molecule contains a total   of 22 protons, 22 electrons, and 22 neutrons.

Information - New Caledonia is one of the least polluted countries in the world. It is in the South Pacific, about 750 miles from Australia.

Quanta of data. Particles and space between. Matter and thought. Tia and Kit. The white cat with the ginger tail. Eileen and her tree.

Tia is flying to London. It would take 32-40 days by boat. So…. When she lands at Heathrow it will be very cold.

It’s hard to see the stars in London. There is a lack.

There is a comet passing by. It has a green hue and can be seen with a telescope. It looks green because of UV radiation from the sun lighting up the gases streaming off it’s surface.

Kit doesn’t know about the comet.

Tia doesn’t know about the comet.

But it is there. Like the quarks and particles, entangled or not. Like the neutrinos and the terrifying immensity of space.

Once upon a time there was an egg. it was fertilised and grew, It became an embryo, a foetus, a baby. It was born. This egg/foetus/baby was not quite so welcome, not quite so loved, so it grew and struggled and tried and laughed and was brave and afraid and happy. Sometimes.

Tia is alive

Kit is alive

The cat with the white fur and the ginger tail is alive

Eileen is alive, for a while

We are all moving, breathing, being, spinning, sometimes hurtling towards something/someone, caught it a gravitational pull so strong that it warps reality.

Urban fox - Canine from the family Canidae. Urban foxes are red foxes, vulpes-vulpes. They can sprint when necessary, but mostly skulk. They eat pretty much anything; birds, rats, mice, rubbish from bins.

Tia is looking for a taxi to Heathrow airport. 

Kit is at Heathrow airport waiting for a friend to arrive 

Tia and Kit do not meet, they pass two yards apart. Close enough to breathe each other in. 

imagine imagine the death of stars

imagine imagine the birth of stars

the beginning

the glory and terror

immensity intensity unknowable insanity

muons

quarks and gluons

physics

let there be gases and chemistry

let there be violent collisions and fragments

let there be tendrils and filaments

let there be light

let there be

splinters of matter dark light swirls spirals orbits something invisible

where did it come from

something

then…..

what is nothing

nothing