The Periphery

 

July 18, 2022

 

Greetings from the edge of our vision,

 In a small, nearly obscure university in Minnesota, there is a physicist who no longer teaches, is not tenured, has only published marginally, and whose research is no longer funded.  He has an office, takes home a meager salary, and lives alone in a small bungalow on campus.  His name is Dr. Rostov Milosovich, and he has made the most important discovery in the history of creation. And no one can ever know.

 His friends, a small circle, call him Milo.  He looks like any of his associates, a slight man with a premature hunch from too many hours bent over his work, studying quarks.   He is not an inspired researcher, not brilliant enough to be recruited to Stanford, and while he longs to be part of the CERN lab in Switzerland, his work was so ordinary they would not even read his papers.  And so, he scribbles on white boards in a tiny lab in a backwater town so small it still has a video rental store.

 And it was there he learned what came before life, and what comes after.

 Milo sat alone in his lab, staring down at a pad of paper.  It was more than math, it was beyond accelerating particles, it was something else.  He saw it in the morass of numbers and letters on the page in front of him, it formed into an image he somehow already knew.

 He pushed away from his desk, legs suddenly so weak he could barely stand, and managed to get outside into the summer air.  He stumbled across the campus and to an open field, and then fell into the grass beneath a tree and lay on his back, staring into a sky so blue it startled him.  There was a flower of a cloud resting on one horizon.

 The sun shone between the branches above him, hidden but known by its light.  He waited in the grass, his heart still hammering in his chest, absorbing the enormity of what he knew.  The sun was right at the edge of a branch, and in its brilliance, there was a swirl of cottonwood, or some other white seed, dancing just above him, shining in the sun so they seemed like fireflies.

 Above all of this there were singular seeds blowing to the west, lit like stars, sparkling in the sun.  They flew so straight, so perfectly directed he first doubted what he was seeing.  He watched one after another fly across the blue, until they reached the edge of the direct sunlight and winked out, invisible, but still there.  It was the same message he’d seen on his tablet.

 He had discovered Heaven.

 Like so many other discoveries, gravity for example, once he was aware of it, it was obvious.  As he walked through the campus he felt its presence, saw the small pieces of the life after life that fit here so we know.  Hidden, but known by its light.

 He had discovered Heaven, the proof hidden inside the smallest particles, but present in nearly every place he looked.  He couldn’t call it Heaven because it conferred too narrow of a connotation.  So, he called it the Periphery, because that’s ultimately how he found it, in the edge of his vision. 

 Milo spent months outlining his proof, thrilled with the possibilities.  He told no one, not his department head, not his friends or his family.  His classes began to dissolve, students complained, and he shrugged it all off.  None of it would matter when the world knew.

 The seasons eased past his window, became winter, and the warm afternoon he would never forget was pressed into the second most important moment in his life.  He was tramping to his office, cutting through a copse of trees at the edge of town.  His breath formed tiny worlds in front of him, coating his scarf in frozen stars.  The wind suddenly surged around him, and he felt the Periphery.  And he was terrified and ecstatically happy. 

 The snow rose off the trees in clouds of crystal white, swirling in the wind, fairies of frozen life, floating through the air, and then settling around him in new silhouette.  He felt the cold and the warmth in the same moment, and then saw her take shape.  He could see her face, the shape of her body, shimmering in the brittle air.  And he could see through her.

He struggled to find his voice.  “Are you an angel?” he asked.

“If you wish.” she said, her voice the sound of sighing trees. “It’s easier to use the word then try to explain all of it now.”

He swallowed, as if he had never done it before.  “Am I dead?”

She laughed, which he felt more than heard, a sound of water and wind and the lightest hint of thunder.  “No, Milo, you are as alive as any other, maybe a little more now.”

He laughed with her, in spite of himself.  He could feel the snow, her form, sifting over him, felt a peace that he could not explain, did not want to.  She drew in a breath, and inhaled a little of him, and then spoke;

“Milo. We share a thing so wonderful and beautiful, and with it comes an ache.  It is a hard thing, but you have joined us in this knowing, and so you have to understand the rest.”

Milo waited, already knowing but needing her to tell him.

“My friend, the world cannot know what we know.  Not right now.  I understand what it means to people, the hope and the joy that comes with this perfect thing.  But believe me, it is not meant to be seen this way.”  She drew another deep breath.  “You have to trust that not knowing has meaning, that the mystery matters.”

“But I know.” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But not for long.”

 

In a small, nearly obscure university in Minnesota, there is a physicist who no longer teaches, is not tenured, has only published marginally, and whose research is no longer funded.  After his stroke he could no longer focus on his classes, and the school kept him on as a kindness, giving him work to do, a place to be. 

 

His friends, an ever-widening circle, call him Milo.  They gather around him where is happiest, in the forests, near the brook, in the summer sun, or the brittle winter afternoons.  He tells them about quarks and poetry and subatomic particles and dandelion seeds, and of things he sometimes sees out of the corner of his eye.  Everyone who knows him is delighted to be with him.  In some ways, even as he has forgotten so much, he is the wisest person they know.

 

Hope this finds you looking carefully,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith