irregular

These past few weeks have had their share of ups and downs, trials and triumphs. I suppose that's to be expected as I continue to explore my life post-divorce, in the midst of a new relationship, still learning how to live as a single woman in a world where couplehood is what I had known for so many years. These days, I feel a kinship to this Type I irregular galaxy, this collection of starlit chemicals known as NGC 55. A Type I irregular galaxy has no specific form and is composed of "a very diverse collection of objects." The descriptor informs me that "this highly detailed galaxy portrait [of NGC 55] highlights a bright core crossed with dust clouds, telltale pinkish star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters." (For more info, be sure to visit the website http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090812.html .)

Dust clouds. I travel with dust clouds, sometimes obscuring my vision with scenes of how things once were, how I had thought they would always be. "Always" is an insanely long time; "always" is a course of action doomed to fail in a world where change is the natural state of affairs. "Always" is an imaginary construct, useful only as an adverb. People change, situations change, attitudes change, and time marches on along its axis. I've said it before: One cannot travel back in time to the same place one once was and expect to find one can step right back into that moment. That moment is lost as soon as the next breath is taken. Time waits for no mere mortal, and mortal all are we.

I've been working for a couple of years now on dismantling the dust clouds, allowing my inner light to shine forth more strongly on this new path I travel along time's ever-forward axis. I've gradually worked on letting in more light whilst also creating new light in the form of new adventures for my world. And I've been blessed to have new relationships forged with those stars close to me, those from the past as well as those new to my life. My energy is poured with both hands into new ventures, new spots of brightness to stave off the darkness of night, as I explore new beaches on other worlds.

duality

Light is known in scientific circles to have a wave-particle duality. Light appears on the horizon, then washes over the world with the brightness of a new day before receding back into the darkness. But light also consists of photons, tiny invisible particles capable of exciting electrons into outward-bound, dancing leaps of measurable energy. Waves of brightness composed of tiny particles of energy, just as the ocean consists of waves of hydrogen-bonded particles of dihydrogen monoxide.

I choose to believe that time, also, has a wave-particle duality. "Time is the fire in which we burn" says one of my favorite actors, Malcolm McDowell, as a Star Trek villian who attempts to harness a nexus wave of time to regain a happier portion of his life. Unfortunately, time only exists as such a viewable ribbon in the movies. Time proceeds ever forward, ever into the future, regardless of the events in its wake. All we can do is attempt to control it by marking its invisible passage with years, days, nanoseconds. Memories are the packets of time recorded in our minds, condensing the present moment's people and events into stored bits of energy which can be recalled by a word, an odor, a vision, a sound, a taste.

I choose to believe that goodness, too, can have a wave-particle duality. We witness small single acts of goodness every day: a phone call from a friend, a smile from a stranger, an unexpected gift from a loved one. But those single acts can foster other acts of goodness, larger displays of charitable intent which benefit not just one, but many, not just the recipient, but also the donor. Giving blood is one such act of goodness with far-reaching effects. Giving blood is a gift one provides to strangers in need, strangers who will never know the author of that life-restoring act of goodness. I choose to believe that the receipt of such a gift inspires a desire to impart further acts of random kindess. I HAVE to believe.