This business, so tedious from every point of view, is extremely concerning, to employ a lame expression from the small sample I have at my disposal. I’m thinking about it—the italics are unavoidable—much too much. That’s why I decided on a change of scene today. I decided to wander where my divine feet (atomic reactors?) take me, enjoying the clean air (let’s call it that) of intergalactic space, listening from afar to the eternal whirring of elliptical, spiral, and even globular galaxies, the last being the most crowded, that is the most metropolitan. Humans have a somewhat nineteenth-century notion of the cosmos, they imagine a post-Romantic soundscape, with screaming violins and Wagnerian bellowing; in fact the music of the spheres is more like repeated limpid tinkling interrupted by sharp rustling and the odd explosion, as well as sudden and slightly irritable metallic lacerations.
The few heavenly bodies visible from that modest globelet called Earth are all very well—Sun, Moon—and they’ve inspired some earnest, dulcet tunes. Fact is, though, you can see interesting stuff just by looking through a keyhole. People make do with what they have. However, there’s nothing remotely like the heartrending immensity of the universe, gleaming with iridescent lights and palpitating cascades of stars. Not to mention that it’s utterly uncontaminated; God willing no intruder’s ever going to set foot in it, apart from a few ramshackle earthly space probes with meager range capabilities.
Without meaning to—you may think that’s irony, but it’s not—I found myself next to two galaxies, one large, one small, that were approaching each other. The deformed shape of the little one, slight but perceptible even to a non-divine eye, like a woman’s belly in the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, made it evident there was an attraction between the two. Later, they would draw closer together and the short, plump galaxy would be sucked in by the large, long one, giving up some of its mass or even being obliterated altogether—always an unsettling event. Now this is instructive to watch, I said to myself, these are cosmic events worth following. Faced with the—I want to say choreography—of the universe, I was recovering the serenity that permeates my heart, call it a heart. No superfluous sentiments, no cloying romanticism, no pointless description needed: what was before me was monumental in its austere abstraction. I have all the time in the world, I can stay here right to the end, I thought, positioning myself to obtain the optimal viewing angle and trying to get comfortable, as they say. The way you stretch out your legs to watch one of those long, long art films in which very little happens, indeed nothing at all happens, but which (wo)men of good taste find stylistically perfect.
If anything cheers me up and makes me feel especially divine, it’s the interactions between galaxies. It’s the elegance of their trajectories, the gorgeous dance numbers executed in perfect detail, their infinite slowness, the sensation of heartbreaking melancholy, but also peace, almost mirth, a tragic mirth that emanates from them, whatever it is, I forget all the rest and feel joyous. Of course, a god is always joyous—what god’s a malcontent, a whiner?—but in this case I’m feeling slightly more joyous, because when by definition one is perfect, differences are measured in microscopic gradations.
To tell the truth, though, there was also a sour aftertaste in my mouth that wasn’t entirely pleasant (for the purposes of metaphor, let us posit I have a mouth, taste buds). And it was only getting worse. Watching the two galaxies converge, I couldn’t help thinking that the beanpole geneticist, too, was heading for a crash, with a body far denser than her own and equipped with much greater gravitational pull. It was a question of mere days and not millions of years, but the highly predictable outcome, as has happened hundreds of billions of times in the cosmos, was that Casanova would either appropriate some of her matter and continue merrily on his way, or he would mercilessly swallow her whole, celebrating with a loud belch.
The very thought astonished me, for never before had the meeting of two galaxies seemed to me a symbol of anything, and it completely spoiled the show. I left the two lovely ladies to their destiny, and headed home. By that I mean the place where I tend to stay, not so much a place as a nexus of the mind, the spirit. What made me move my butt, to use a slovenly expression, was the thought that if I stayed there watching to the bitter end, there wouldn’t be a trace of the beanpole left. In a few million years, not even a tooth out of the poor thing’s mouth would remain. I’d find ranks of crocodiles and other hideous beasties typical of warmer climes, jaws unsheathed. Maybe even iguanas. Thousands of iguanas roaming the industrial plain once inhabited by bipeds, now a swamp, the bipeds extinct. Iguanas with absolutely no sense of humor, iguanas that bite.*
* It’s pointless to discuss crocodiles, they bite and have always bitten. I made them that way, and I take full responsibility. If I’d done it any other way, we’d have a madly overcrowded animal shelter instead of a food chain, and all of nature would be in chaos. The only proper choice was to have the larger animals eat the small. I couldn’t afford to get sentimental about it.