Dear David Foster Wallace
As if this was the last thing I was to do.
The last thing to ever see.
Staring at this screen.
Grasping for words of hope to leave you.
To have something to lean on for me
In case I wake up tomorrow.
Another day, another sorrow.
There is technology. There are miracles happening every day through the use of science. The scientific method always probing and asking and reaching closer and closer. Where once the world was flat. Where once we were the center of the universe we now see, this life could go on infinitely. The structure in which we see. Our eyes inform our decisions is but one minor minute adjustment in a system that is larger than we will ever know.
Science wants to be wrong. It is not a dogma that professes it knows all. It is math and science birthing formulas birthing theories. Theories that launch spaceships. That create gene theory. That slow cancer. That solve real world problems. This is something to take comfort in. Similar formulas that split the atom might soon create infinite energy for all mankind. The same grasping exploring fingers extending from our brains. Through our eyes. To our fingers. To our machines. Can create a heaven as well as a hell.
We are the keepers of our own destiny. The godhead has given us freewill. Through every choice we make there is a repercussion. Through every thought we have there is the ability to take action. To do nothing. I say this as the whole thing. The whole experiment seems to be tottering on the edge of an abyss. As we stare down the edge of the cliff. As we see the darkness that is our companion we also can wish to see the infinite. That through that darkness is an entire world of you and me. Existing in other forms. Swimming in alien oceans. This is not the end but a rocket-ship to the beginning. As each heart beat ticks away our alarm clock living for expiring. We can choose to realize the hopelessness of it all. The absolute nothing that we are. Knowing that we are always slowing, dying. That everything after us will die. That there will be no proof of these words or these thoughts. That I might as well have never written them.
Or we can accept something different. As vague and nearly as hopeless as it may be. It may be that we are part of an infinite machine. All cogs and pegs pinging our way through a program. An algorithm that has adjusted and readjusted itself for infinity. Yes you are still small. Smaller than ever before. You might not have ever existed and would it be any different? Could you have read this? Would we have ever had a kiss? A hug from a loved one? Have ever loved? Have ever questioned? Have ever lived to die?
I believe that this is the reason. To ask why. To die knowing nothing. To always be open. To new paradigms. Seeking knowledge. I could be Buddha. We all can be awakened. We all can know the synchronicity within the nothing and the everything. A rambling chorus of crickets howling on our one brown blade of grass. Seeking to understand the giants who haunt us. A single-celled organism dividing. Consuming. Conquering.
If this may be my last note I leave you with. Let it be known that I don’t know. No one knows. But we try and so must you. Continue. Have empathy for others. Use your body to survive. Use your mind to explore. The human brain a hunk of gray matter so powerful it can imagine the infinity of the universe. The multi-verse. Super black holes and super white holes banded together like human tissue. An umbilical cord connecting space and time.
Stars like atoms.
You are the rings of Saturn.
You are Jupiter’s ice moon.
You are pure energy.
Born from the stars you imagine.
And we remember you.
R.I.P. DFW
