Relativity

Space-time is a fabric, or at least that's what smarter people than me would have you believe, and every object in the universe rests upon it, and bends it (picture that yellow funnel thing at the science museum that you drop a coin in...or a really fat guy standing on a trampoline). And we wind up with the most misunderstood force of all, gravity. And the contention is that the more massive an object, the bigger the dip. Now follow my logic here. They say a black hole is created when a star, much more massive than our own sun, collapses post-supernova, and bends space-time so deep that even light cannot escape its gravity. What I cannot fathom is why the collapsed star is more massive that the original. I mean, they're both made of the same stuff. So why could light escape the dip before the star collapsed? Maybe I missed understanding mass in Physics I, but shouldn't both the pre- and post-star have the same mass, despite the size difference. OK, so maybe it doesn't matter that I understand it. But then they go on to theorize that the big bang sprung out of one of these dips in space-time, from nothing. How much mass can nothing have? So we are left to ponder why that dip, the very deepest dip, was there to begin with. And, of course, the answer has to be anti-gravity; some even more mysterious force causing the dip...from the other side?...from the anti-universe? Perhaps in the anti-universe, objects bend time into spikes, rather than dips. I've never been there, so I can't say for sure. Maybe there really are 248 dimensions.

And from there, an even more mysterious force grabbed a hold of me...my imagination...and I began to think about the phrase "crossing a line"...as in "you crossed a line"...and I realized that as far as cognizant species go, it is not opposable thumbs that make us unique...not even our linguistic abilities. It is indeed the almost infinite number of lines we draw. When we let vicious dogs nip at the balls of naked prisoners at Abu Graib (not sure how...and don't care how to spell it), we consider that a humane form of interrogation, but once we move on to waterboarding, we've 'crossed the line' into torture. And when we converse with someone about their personal problems, that's ok, but when they ask about ours, of course, they've 'crossed a line'. And it's fine if someone loves us, but, god forbid they 'cross the line' and love someone else. We are overly enamored of drawing lines in the sand, and somewhere along the line, as our intelligence evolved, we forgot to embody the notion that there are two vast areas on either side of those lines; but, more importantly, that those vast areas are still there when our line is erased at high tide, and what once was two is now one, and it is virtually impossible to tell what belonged where, or what it was, or rather, what they were. What this all means? I have no idea, but I think it all depends on whether you live in this universe or the anti-universe, and whether you bend the fabric up or down (or in any other unperceived dimension). What it all boils down to though, is that we don't actually know anything, because there are no lines.

Which brought me right to RIGHT (insert truth if you'd rather). Right just is. It is not relative. We seem to be obsessed with creating observable differences, rather than creating, or understanding, an uninterrupted shoreline of clean, white sand. When we arbitrarily draw a line, and say this side is right, and this side is wrong, it is simply our line. But once you erase that line, you're right back standing in the middle of a vast, infinite space, bending the fabric; bending it in the four observable dimensions, and in the 244 most of us can't begin to conceive; ready for brand new bang.

So, in conclusion, your right has to be wrong too. Every time you make your child eat his peas, you are drawing a line for him, and creating a cruel and arbitrary space; an illusory space you created by bisecting his original uncondition. And now there are two of him, destined to fight as brothers are wont to do, when there was no fight in him to begin with. And now he needs to decipher what belongs to him...and what belongs to the other him.

There is no evil in the newborn child; no such thing as a bad seed. We put it there, the very moment we draw the first line. We put it there the moment we decide for him. When I was a kid, I stuck my finger in the latch of our refrigerator. Nearly electrocuted myself, and I figured out it was a bad idea all on my own. I didn't need my mother to tell me. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to instruct your children of the dangers in this world. It's a dangerous world. What I am saying is that when we draw lines for them, we create in them what never existed within, before we drew it. The very notion of original sin. Phooey, I say...piffle. Fuck your sin, and fuck your god. Fuck your heaven and hell, your good and evil, your right and wrong. I wasn't born with it and neither were you. But after all is said and done, after all the lines are drawn, we choose to create the space for them to flourish; we create the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists, the thieves, because we create in every child the space for them to exist, by simply drawing lines. Find me a straight line, naturally occurring, anywhere in the fabric of the continuum. Go ahead, I dare you. You can't...because they are no more real than gravity.

It is undoubtedly true that each of us bends the fabric...has an effect on the whole...and whether it turns out to be a spike or a dip depends entirely on the spaces we choose to create on the blank, clean curvature. It's time we learned that.