Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The Littlest Journey. The Greatest Journey.


First, watch this:


Our story starts with cataclysm and a fraction of a mote of tiny:  a quantum of tininess.  There's incomprehensible light, flame, burning plasma and speed - such speed as no can imagine.  A velocity so great that everything is a passing smear, blended colors of burning reds, boiling blues, brilliant white.

And then darkness.

And cold.  Oh, so cold.  The world is black and the numbness of cold is beyond measure.  It is lonely here, speeding in the dark, out into nothing.

But what's this?  Something tugs, it pulls.  Look!  There is another.  What is it?  Is it me?  Am I it?  It is a mystery, but it tugs at me and soon we spin, together, like two lovers joining hands, a hug between a father and his daughter, two pieces of a puzzle joining.

And there are more of us.  First another pair.  Then eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one-hundred twenty-eight, two-hundred fifty-six, five-hundred twelve, one-thousand twenty-four, and so on.  We pull together, finding one another, but lost in the deep endless blackness.

Still we speed through the void, the endless dark.  There is no edge to be seen, just a world of black.  Yet we continue to find more of ourselves, drawing together.  We are a teeming mass and together we generate our own warmth.  Our own heat.  We bump into one another and it is good.  We have a home and that home is with one another.

There are so many of us now, I feel the crush of the others and this excites me.  We spin and twirl, dance and dive, but always with our pairs, always together.  There is no time, just our endless dance.

But the weight!  The pressure.  The gravity, it tugs, it pulls and as it pulls the excitement builds.  The heat, it is nearly unbearable but fulfilling all the same.  We are together, we are one.

We are a dusty mass, I can feel it, pulling together.  Somehow I can sense our shape, a disk, spinning & flattening.

Oh!  Suddenly light - bright, incomprehensible, burning light.  It is everywhere, it is penetrating, it is blazing.

It is me!  I am the source of the light.  It is us!  We burn, we blast forth into the darkness, illuminating the void, shining out onto the dusty disk spreading around us.  We are the bright watcher, the flame in the black, the steward of ourselves.

We can see other masses in the dusty disk, the gradually growing spheres, not as great as ourselves, but our light bathes them in warm, great light.  Some of them are hard, others are wispy like great dust balls.  Some are dark and black, some are bright and red, others are cool blue or dirty tans.  They race around us, colliding, and dancing about.  Soon there is no dust, but just our companions, little worlds, orbiting about us, reflecting some of our light back at us, gently tugging at us, while we greatly tug, swing them about us.

And there!  In the darkness about us, there is another point of light blazing out of the dark.  And another!  Another!  They are everywhere and they are like us!  The dark is not so dark anymore.  The dark is not so cold anymore.  It is satisfying, knowing we are not the only ones in the void, that there are other bright flames in the dark.  My dancing partner and I, we twirl and spin with an excited happiness.

The pressure, it is so great.  It presses and I feel those around me pulling at me.  Their light shining, pouring out of them.  Some are merging, fusing, becoming.... like me, but different.  They are somehow the same, but  bigger.  Different.  They shine different colors than me.

My spinning, twirling partner grows closer, moving ever closer, our dance pressing closer, our dips and dives tighter and then - in an instant - my partner is me and I am my partner.  We are something greater, a combination of what we were, but now different.  We shine a different color.

The others, around us, they too are fusing, merging into one.  And some of them into others, creating yet something else, something new.  Something we don't know, but once we fuse, we feel right.  We balance.  We find others like us to dance with, or perhaps we find two others smaller than us to dance with.  Still we dip and dive, swirl and twirl, exalt in our bright, burning, existence.

But we cannot dance as fast.  We are heavier.  We are slower.

Soon our light changes, our bright, massive, burning dance moves from brilliant white, to yellow, to orange, and now to red.  We are massive, swallowing some of our companions, making them a part of us, breaking them down into smaller pieces.  They fuse with some of us, some of us with them.

Wait - are we falling?  Why are we falling?  What is falling?  We are racing, falling together into a great, massive, heavy, grave heap.  The pressure:  it compresses, and presses, and constricts, and binds.  Our dance!  We cannot dance.

We.  Must.  Break.  Free.

Bright, brilliant, magnificent light!  Everywhere!  It burns, it excites!  It comes from us and we are racing, again, into the dark void.  Reds and blues and yellows echo around us, flaming plasma into the void.

And then it's dark.  Again.  And cold.  Oh so cold.  But I am still me, merged with my partner and our partners after that.  We are not a part of a great whole anymore, but alone, and our dance is slow.  There is no light, except those others out there, flaming in the darkness.

It is lonely, again.

We are falling towards one of those points of light.  It's just a yellow dot, at first.  But gradually it begins to grow and as we approach, I can feel its warmth.  Just a bit.  I dance a bit faster with my partners.  Just a little.  But those little bits become greater, adding up.  The point of light is now massive, I cannot see around it.

Its brilliant yellow light is everything.

I'm... falling, again!  What is this?  It's blue and white and green and tan.  It fills my sight and a I burn, falling towards it, through a sea of pale blue, towards greens and browns and things.  I am whisked about, floating, then falling, then racing.

Things move about below me, around me, above me.  This one, it inhales me.

I am... what am I now?  I dance about, warm, twirling with my partners.  This thing I am a part of, that I am, it has arms and legs.  It  does not just dance about, it moves, with purpose, it does things.  Things I did not know, but somehow... know?

I feel... joy?  Oh what joy!  I did not know that word, but now I know it.  Love!  I feel love, beautiful warm love, like the brilliant sun I was a part of before, shining through this thing I am, this person.  This person has found their partner, their love, like my bond with my partner, who I first found in the darkness.

These people, they move like we, dancing about, twirling and growing close.  A kiss, a hug.  They build things, they work to understand how I work, how we work, and everything works.  And this love, we create something new with it.

Little other people who dance and sing and love and cry.  A part them is like me, a spinning bit of me, sent from a glowing star to this little blue and white and green and tan world.  They are a part of something and that something is a part of me and at the same time just like me.  But different.

All the while, shining out of the sky at us, are our brothers and sisters, living in their giant bright burning suns. Watchers in the dark, stewards of everything around them.  It is a happy thing.

We live.  We love.  We cry.  We are angry.  We are happy.  We are sad.  We aspire.  We are rejected.  We destroy.  We create.  Life is beautiful and it is hard and it is easy and it whips us about.  Still, we dance our dance with our partners.  Sometimes they leave, sometimes they return.  But we always find our dipping and diving partners while we experience this life as a person.

What is this?  Someone has... died?  Our partner!  Our love!  What is this, death?  I feel... sadness.  Oh what sadness.  Crushing, black, dark sadness.  It is like the cold, racing darkness.  I am warm, but cold, feeling this.  But those others, like me, they are still there.  They are moving on, no longer a person, but part of this little world.

They are a part of its blue skies, white clouds, green forests, tan ground.

And soon, my person, too, is near death  It is tough to function.  Things don't move like they should and I cannot dance with who I should while inside and moving about this person.  Then it becomes cold, again.

Not like the deep, never ending dark.  But it is cooler here.  The sun still shines in the sky, spreading its warm embrace across the land.  Maybe soon I will be a part of another person and those things that are uniquely living - love, hate, happiness, and sadness - will be a part of me and myself a part of them, again.

It will happen, in time, because I am star dust and sometimes I burn in the brightest star, over flowing with energy, and sometimes I am part of a person, aware.