Some days are Einstein-less. Today for example, I am packing up and going back to New York City, after a week end in the country. I spent last night reading, and was disappointed to see the whole world war two wrapped up in a few pages. From the scientists fleeing the nazi's it went straight to the bomb being made after Albert wrote to Roosevelt and urged him to have people invent it. I somehow imagined there would be references in there to loss of kin, or friends, but it seems that either did not happen, or the biographer did not feel it was pertinent to the book. Instead, I watched him rambling down the street in Princeton with no socks on, and coming up with incorrect theories on unification of the universe. And believe it or not, the United States considered him a possible communist. What dopes. Governments are all alike really. The Germans threw him out for being Jewish. And the United States wouldn't let him help make the Nuke even though he suggested they make one, because he had been against war. It is so ironic isn't it? That the man who discovered it all and helped the USA would be left out of the final act because they didn't trust him.
Today is without Einstein. I have packed my book and am about to carry my bags to the car. Last night, in my sleep, a woman bent down to say to me, "It's time you went back to your own people." I thought she meant that I was on another planet. Or perhaps just sequestered away somewhere. When I woke up, I remembered her being sort of grudgingly nice... as if she was being nice to me inspite of herself. I think she also told me I had to be friends with her even if I did not want to be. Perhaps she is that shut-away part of myself who has stopped trying to reach out to the world. Perhaps that self is saying it is time to try again.
Or maybe not.
Einstein said he could not stop trying to figure out the unity of all. He said he might never be able to, but that did not prevent him from trying. It was the seeking for truth that was so precious, he said, not so much attaining it. This is what I feel, too. I have looked high and I have looked low. I have slipped through hells gates and risen to the heights of heaven, and I wander always through Middgard, eyeing the bridges and tunnels and listening to the singing of the birds. It is in humans, and in nature. It is in the painted sky and the vast earth we live on. It is hidden in letters and numbers and places obscure. It is in the languages of the world, and sometimes it is right there before us, shining, and sometimes it is concealed by the great veil... that female covering that hides her beloved secret.
Abigail,
ReplyDeleteNice post and very pertinent remarks about how certain issues like loss of life during the war are easily brushed aside, as if they had no meaning. And sometimes, as you suggest, quantity written about an issue is indicative of how much it weighs in the mind of the author.
I like your conclusion about the beauty and attraction of the process consisting in seeking the truth; truth may be an end in itself, but the process through which it is sought is also an enlightening moment, and perhaps, for people who wish to understand how a statement reaches the status of 'truth', the process is more important than the outcome, because the outcome flows from the process, and there is something to apply from the process to other situations where new truths have to be uncovered or reached. I thought that was very perceptive. I think it was T.S. Eliot who also said something like: 'What matters is the trying'.
You end your post on a most comprehensive note on where truth is to be found: under and above the earth, in what we see and what we hear, in that which is explicit and implicit, in the diversity of form, natural and human, and in the beauty of that which is dearly sought under a veil, 'covering... her beloved secret', in your words.
Thank you so much.
Ali H. Raddaoui
I like how you wanted more of the human side, the "loss of kin, or friends." Sometimes when we look at the big picture of history, we miss the small stories of everyday people, their struggles, their loss, their triumphs. Those stories are the ones that lift all of us.
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