It Spins

It’s the most perfect thing I’ve never seen.

It spins. I only know this because everything around it spins. You can’t really describe it — it’s not made for description. It doesn’t care that I’m here right now watching it. It’s not performing for me. But I want to believe that because it’s so beautiful.

Humans are visual creatures; we know this from birth. After the darkness of the womb the first few moments of light are frightening. After a time we crave that excitement.

The new.

A new color, a new shape. Endless possibilities of combinations all around us. We invented pictures before we invented civilization. We wanted to hold on to moments forever, share them with each other. We invented language to describe every feature. Words that conjure images in our brain even if we’ve never seen them. We’ve found ways to convey this information even to those who could never see it. That’s what draws me here. The unexplained.

But the absence is jarring.

It’s an abomination to the way we see the world. A cold void surrounded by chaos. What’s behind the veil of emptiness? It looks so still and calm — like if I toss a rock across it, gentle ripples would form and dissipate. I could float on top of the black and kick my feet into oblivion.

However unassuming it seemed, around it the violence was obvious. Swirling matter following the flow of space-time. Sinking into an unknown dimension never to return to this universe — at least as it was. The fashion of the universe is that everything should be made new until everything is swallowed up or isolated. Then something else.

Maybe this all starts over and we do it all again. Maybe this moment happens over and over again. Meaningless. The feeling I get in my chest when I look out the window tells me that can’t be true. That even if a thousand versions of me get to see it — it will always feel like this.

The hard border in the universe between the visual and the abstract. Beyond that point can only be imagined. The data I’m sending back will be interpreted. It will be analyzed for generations.

Images will be made.

All the ones and zeroes will be gathered together and made manifest. People will think they’re seeing what I am right now. But they won’t. How could they? How could they feel the gentle hum the ripping of time leaves reverberating through space? How can they see colors that only exist for a moment — that can only be created here? Explosions that make no sound — fires that consume but do not burn.

I think back to the first astronauts. The men and women who left Earth on the promise of a new frontier. Farther from the place of our creation than any human had any right to be. If they only understood how much further there was to go. How endless it all is.

Knowing this insatiable leviathan exists, swallowing star systems whole, it seems like an end. Like nothing can survive it. Here, viewing it in person, it looks like a doorway.

Nothing fights the spin. We all follow the path set out from those first movements.

When I was ten I got my first telescope for Christmas. I would spend evenings in a clearing not far from my house looking at the stars. Picking out real estate for my house on the Moon. Dreaming of meeting aliens. One night I fell asleep and forgot to come home. My mother forbade me to stargaze for a month. My adolescent heart would never recover from that lost week.

One week is a trillion stars, Mom!

And not one of those stars has another you, son.

I wish she could see this now. This cloud wasn’t just destruction. On the cooler edges of this stampede of particles, matter came together anew. Planets and moons new and old. The chaos sent things shooting out across the galaxy to disrupt and cause change.

Because a static universe is a dead one.

We fear supernovae, but without them we might never have existed. If some cataclysm hadn’t sent matter flying off to clump together, I wouldn’t be writing this right now. I look at the horizon of the singularity and wonder how many of these letters are mixed into that mass of hot gas and plasma. How many observers saw the beauty of the universe and returned to it — the universe never knowing the difference?

It’s a cold irony but one humans understand well. The worship of something that can never acknowledge that devotion. Billions at home still believe they’re the center of the universe. Are they right? If we can’t find the edge, everywhere is the center. I’m standing here at the edge — and it goes on forever.

Like a funhouse mirror that expands as you get closer.

Was this what we’ve been seeing in our minds? The gods and monsters made up around campfires? Something so out of frame of human understanding that we gave it our voice to speak with? Am I a prophet looking upon the face of god?

Or am I Jonah — about to be swallowed by the whale?

Closer and closer but still so far away from the mouth. Will I sit in the belly of broken reality until my rescue? Will my creator save me from erasure? Will my god come to take me from where I should not be?

No, no one will save you. You should not be here — but we’ll take you anyway. We’ll take it all eventually.

The precipice nears. Not the point of no return — I passed that long ago. But the point where I cannot write. Where I cannot paint my images. Where I cannot describe to you where — or who — I am.

You’ll join me here someday. After the pieces of you become the pieces of many other things. When you can’t fight the pull anymore and you join the rest of the universe in the spin. The carousel of rebirth. You will not be the same when you cross through that gate.

See you on the other side.