The center of the universe spins around us faster then any of us could ever have imagined. Without effort or sound, it moves in and out of our lives quicker then the human eye will ever be able to see. Beyond, I am almost sure, anything that the human imagination will ever be able to entertain. It circles us with such ferocity that we can feel it’s breeze, both on the hair of our arms and the tips of our intuitions. At night, alone In the dark, we sometimes squeeze our eyes closed tight, holding them that way with our hand in order to catch a glimpse of it’s light bouncing off the backs of our minds, knowing even before we begin that the moment we take our hand away and open our eyes, it seems to be gone.
There, but gone.
And in our excitement, or our fear, or our pain, or desire or love or hate or need or any of a thousand light-driven emotions, we come up with ways to explain and comfort. We jump out of bed and write a poem. Or maybe we pull up the covers around our necks and pray. Some search for words that can explain what they’ve seen, others search for money. We write books and paint pictures and sculpt and form and reshape anything and everything we can get our hands on. We build buildings, then cities, then worlds, and then, when we can imagine no further, we tear everything down and begin again. That is our understanding of power - the mistake of thinking that we are in pursuit of something that is running away. I often think of it as our greatest weakness. And if not our greatest, then certainly our most destructive.
But the universe is not running away from us. As a matter of fact, the center of the universe is blowing up against us all of the time. It runs into us so much that we begin to make the mistake of thinking that we are one in the same thing, or that we are somehow part of it. Or worse yet, that the center of universe is like a tool, best used by us to realize our pursuits. But nothing could be further from the truth. The universe is not a tool, and it is certainly not running away from us. As a matter of fact, the center of the universe has been blowing up against me so much lately that it is beginning to get on my nerves.
* * * * *
In the park one day, the center of the universe slapped up against my leg, disguised as a rumpled sheet of notebook paper, trying to look as if it had been blowing around the park for weeks. I only had to glance down to recognize the writing - that scratchy, fat-tipped pencil scrawl that I’d seen so many time before. I knew what it was and couldn’t resist grabbing at it. Is it the allure of complex things written in a simple way that makes us so curious? Is it just an innate need to know? The inability to step aside as life blows by? I don’t know, but I grabbed the paper off of my leg and held it up to my face, trying to read the lines. You see, this has happened to me before, and each time I’ve seen that paper it looks the same. Like some sort of random, unorganized list, written for quicker eyes then my own. If you don’t know any better, you’d just think it was a piece of old paper, blowing across the park, rather then the center of the universe. But like I said, that particular piece of paper had stuck to me more then once and I knew what it was. My eyes scanned the page, fast, hoping that this time they would grab onto something that made any sense.
But just like the time before, and the time before that, the center of the universe knew what I was up to, and ripped through my fingers and was gone before I could finish reading even one sentence. It spun around my feet in the wind, then blew across the park faster then my eyes could follow. The universe, it seems, moves much the same way that it is read - random and fast and one step beyond sight. After it was gone that day, I kept walking, my back to the wind, hoping that the paper would blow my way again. I turned, more then once I’ll admit, thinking that it’d be there, fluttering against the ground by my heels. Laughing at my slowness. But every time I turned, there was nothing but leaves and brown grass and dry ground, staring blankly back at me.
* * * * *
A long time ago, I remember sitting in a parking lot in the dark, waiting for a bus to take me north. As I sat there, talking with several others who for one reason or another were sitting around an empty bus station, someone’s words crossed the small space between us like a knife. Something about the Klan, and something about they. I wish I could remember better just what was said, but I don’t. Time has taken care of that memory. But I do remember that I objected to what was said, out loud, there in the dark, with those others, all of us sitting on curbs or leaning against the closed, concrete, bus station.
And I remember that I thought the bus was pulling into the parking lot at that very moment, the way everyone’s breath drew in and the parking lot grew quiet. But it wasn’t the bus at all, but the center of the universe, sweeping in to remind me that I wasn’t among friends, and that if I could be just a bit more foolish I could join her as she blew around the world, collecting up the dead. I thanked her for her offer, but choose instead to keep my mouth shut for the next two hours, hoping that I would make it out of that dark parking lot alive.
When the headlights of the bus finally swept over us, I grabbed my bag and climbed aboard as quickly as the others seemed to scatter into the shadows. All of us have our fears, I guess. For some it is the thought of being seen, while for others, it is just the opposite. As I found a seat, I imagined those others, hiding just outside the reach of the light, with their drinks and dirty clothes and all their fears, and somehow felt ashamed that I could allow myself to feel safe inside of a bus filled with sleeping old people. As the bus edged its way out of the parking lot, I felt pathetic and small, wondering why I lived in a world where running away sometimes seems like the only option.