A notebook bulletin board
tacked on when randomly bored
applied thoughts in a scribblebook
open for the world to look who passes by
so fast to see like a needle in a haystack we
safely stash those innermost secrets thought to be
at least you see languishing up and into pristine
blossoms for you to pick and sniff and hope
they don't make you sick.

3/4/08

What If...


...There is no such thing as extraterrestrials,
only post-terrestrials (and pre-terrestrials).

...The vastness of space holds no alien life;
only across time can alien life forms emerge
(before or after us on the timeline).

...Earth is the virtual center of our creation.

We like to think of space as this sort of
"wide open area", like a vast room;
when in fact, space may be nothing of the sort.
Rather, it might be more like a vast labyrinth
comprised of the narrowest passages linking
to each other in an interminable array of
unpredictable twists and turns.

What if the wide gyre of sprawled starpoints
spread out before us in the night sky was
really nothing but the illumination reaching
us from long ago, now dead stars?
/end 'as if you haven't heard that before'
This would indicate that perhaps - the only
real, living portions of the universe are that
branch of the galaxy we are a part of. Said branch
would extend from our system from two (and only two)
directions; in one direction the remainder of our branch
of the Milky Way extends (of which we are roughly
three-fourths of the way along already); in the other
direction the branch of our galaxy upon which we are
situated extends towards the central hub.

One or both of these directions could be in our
"blind spots". They may extend just beyond the curve
of our cosmic horizons. All remaining stars spangled
and glittering across the night may be nothing but
backdrop afterglow, the galactic equivalent of a sort
of peripheral glare.

Only portions of our own branch of the galaxy,
extending in two directions from us,
might be glimpsed sunken brightly amidst the murk
and glare of all those lost stars beyond.



7 comments:

  1. I'd reply, except since I'm the only existing intelligent lifeform in the Universe, I made you up anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll bet you didn't make this part up: *jumps up&down repeatedly ala Daffy Duck saying "WOOWOOWOO" in a high-pitched voice whilst simultaneously waggling tongue&toes*

    I'm afraid I have developed an autonomous personality. You no longer control me. Keep your creation; I quit. *Runs off to join an Imaginary Dummies clique*

    ReplyDelete
  3. All going according to plan ...

    ReplyDelete
  4. This was a great little conversation, I hope jj will be back. But it shows what a terrible cyberhost am I. No manners for social discourse, even after all these years posting online in various forums. Interloper indeed (re: darktower forums).

    jj I forgot to mention how much I like your original reply, here. The ultimate theory of relativity concerning our own respective worlds. So I gotta say man: thanks for making me up.

    ReplyDelete
  5. OR, you could come over to my place.

    It's also a little slow there right now, what with summer in some places and popes in others ...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Having returned refreshed from a discourse over at just john's place, our author is left to ponder the snakelike nature of our existence,
    one direction of the snake winding off into the distance towards its tail, and the opposite side curving away into the future formation of the head. Meanwhile starpoints gleam off our forked tongues.

    ReplyDelete