Saturday, May 24, 2008

1.

Matter, that thing we know to be most solid, & most reliable, is now known to mostly be comprised of empty space. This means the half-empty cup of coffee on the table in front of you, the table itself, the dead bird on the sidewalk, the sidewalk itself, the letter you just received in the mail, even your own lover, is overwhelmingly what is commonly, though incorrectly, called nothing. What you're holding in your hands, your body, your hands themselves, mostly empty space. There are two reasons our eyes are able to detect the difference between one object & the next: strong bonds & light. Light is only visible on account of things getting in its way, & things only get in light's way on account of their bonding together at the molecular level. In astronomy, dark matter is invisible matter that's unable to be directly detected but that's thought to exist by way of observable gravitational effects on objects that can be seen. On the micro level, we can infer dark matter exists because each object holds its own particular unique shape, & on the macro level we can do the same because we feel an attraction to certain objects over others. A cake is not an apple, for example, nor a boat a paring knife, &, for the sake of argument, I prefer apples & boats to cakes & paring knives. But it's not that simple; it can't be, can it? Of course, the way an object looks, as well as its smell, the way it tastes, & a whole litany of other factors, also holds sway over our level of attraction to it. And, because we're discerning creatures, not every liqueur, say, will appeal to us in the same way. We could say, though, then, that at a purely fundamental level, everything that comprises the physical world is made up of light matter & dark matter, the latter outnumbering the former by an overwhelming number. Kabbalah isn't the only spiritual stance to state that we live our lives in near total darkness. It seems, then, that the old adage holds true: things are rarely as they seem.