Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada by Hale Keith

Author:Hale, Keith [Hale, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Watersgreen House
Published: 2012-07-30T14:00:00+00:00

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Six

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Keenly interested in the latest discoveries and theories in astronomy, I sat in on a lecture given by an astronomer from Texas’ McDonald Observatory. He claimed that if a large telescope, powerful enough to see forty billion light years away, could be stationed in space, far from the interference of the earth’s atmosphere, astronomers could theoretically watch the birth of the universe, which they estimated to have exploded into existence some forty billion years ago.

I thought of the ancient Norse belief that the earth was cut and shaped from the body of Ymir, father of the frost giants and enemy of the gods. I thought of the human sacrifices made to the Phoenician god, Moloch; of the Aztec’s dedication of the great pyramid temple in Tenochtitlan, when the Aztec chiefs and priests slit open the bodies and tore out the hearts of twenty thousand captives to appease the gods; of the Sumerian belief that man was created from the blood of the dragon. Tiamat, mother of Chaos. The Sumerians gradually disappeared as a people, burying their gods with them.

I had long been fascinated by ancient religions, and was often left feeling melancholy as I put down a book about the worship and sacrifice, the hope and devotion, of some ancient people who had been just as sure they knew the “truth” as the fundamentalists are today.

My exploration of religion did not rest solely in dead gods, however, for I was continually aware of the supernatural element in my own life. Often I wondered if someday I might succeed in tapping the curious energy that dreamed those dreams, that made coincidence a commonplace occurrence in my life. Cody was at the center of all these dreams and mysticisms, leaving me to believe the answer lay in some chemistry between us, though I could never pinpoint it further. Since I could not put my faith in anything else, I trusted in and tried to honor my own intuitions and conscience, leading me to an individualistic, situation ethic with which I was pleased. Although my good and evil applied only to myself, I felt the world might show improvement if my ethics were more universally applied.

Commitment continued to elude me. I could not imagine dying like my father for the faceless masses. Had they, I wondered, seemed less faceless to him? Certainly, my mother seemed to share his commitment. However, having grown just as weary of political arguments as I had of philosophical diatribes, I was no more inclined to die for the social democrats than I was for the logical positivists.

Meanwhile, there was twentieth-century Arkansas providing me with plenty of questions. It took quite a bit of effort to make it through school, through sidewalks, through conversations, when all around was talk of hunting and deer season, talk of cars, and the inevitable racist slurs. Often I felt like talking to no one, but as I began to sink into myself, it seemed the world took a greater interest in my plans.

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