Yesterday I
found a file from my first computer. I still remember buying it and the anticipation
of the delivery afterwards. I can recall
the excitement I felt when I plugged it in and the rattle of the vent accompanied
by loud scratching of the needle in the hard disk. I remember thinking about
all the things I would do with it. Mostly it was digitalizing the stuff I wrote
by hand in my notebooks. That was actually the sole reason used, when I tried
to persuade my father to buy it. “Everyone has it!” “I need it for school!” “I
am tired of always waiting in line for my turn in school!” Eventually he saw
into my reasoning and gave in. And, I did write a lot. There were many stories
I started, but never finished. Countless songs, lyrics and poems among other
stuff. When I switched to using a laptop, I put that entire unfinished opus in
one file titled: Opus infinitum. It
was that file I discovered and decided to take a look inside. What I found were
diary entries, three novels (one of which still looks promising) and various
thoughts on different subjects. I guess I always had it in me - this kind of
writing, with only one difference. I did it in Slovene and wrote with naïve
passion full of blame and sorrow. I guess I am still like that, only now I successfully
hide that naïve passion and blame under pretentious knowledge with passive
aggressive tone to it. I blame Alanis Morissette for that.
In those
files there was one Word file titled: We
are never together. I decided to read it. Your God was it pathetic. It had
some interesting points of observation to it, but mostly it was soaked with
nihilism. You are right to imagine it was about relationships and love. I
checked the date. I was 18 at the time. I realized I was writing about my first
love, my first boy crush. The one that made it quite clear to me I was gay.
From that point on it was pointless for me to hide behind the “cool” reasons,
when I had to explain, why I had been without a girlfriend. You wouldn´t
believe what kind of explanations I came up with just to erase the suspicion,
quite unsuccessfully to be honest. However, this is not the topic I want to
talk about. I believe my coming out story would be of no interest for you. I
chose to start with this entry, because science that I read and use now in my work
confirmed the sappy theory about people never being together. We truly are not.
And here it is why.
In the past
few weeks there has been some soccer championship going on. Forgive me for not
knowing precisely, but sport has never been a subject I spent time thinking
about even remotely. The fact is there were matches to be seen and progress of
teams to be followed. While my friends led discussions about goals and players,
I spent time thinking about what makes a ball move.
The
assumption might be that a swinging boot travelling at a certain velocity
contacts the stationary ball and thereby pushing the ball along until the ball
gains enough velocity to travel on its own accord (McFadden, pg 121). The thing
is, what is happening is that a ball moves because its inertia is much smaller
than the one of a player. So to say, the momentum (mass multiplied by velocity)
a player has is greater than the momentum of a ball. That is why it moves. It
has to. However, that is not end of the story. The real magic of reality
happens when one takes a closer look to the point of the impact and what
happens there.
In
chemistry we learnt all matter consists of atoms. We also learnt atoms are
built up from nucleus and electrons orbiting around them. Actually there is no
orbit for an electron to travel on rather it is a space where there is a
probability of it to be found called orbital. Nucleus too is furthermore built
up from protons and neutrons. The names themselves already suggest the nature they
have. Neutrons are neutral with no charge, protons are positive with a positive
charge and electron, as you know, is charged negatively. There is an attraction
between a positive and negative charged elements and repulsion between same
charged elements. I imagine we all tried to join sides of a magnet with same
charge together and were unsuccessful. Wasn´t it funny how they would avoid
each other in the last moment when the tension got stronger? In a bulk of regular
matter, however, nearly all the attractive and repulsive forces cancel out to
leave net electromagnetic force of zero between any two objects. But on the
scale of atoms and molecules, the electromagnetic forces do not cancel.
Electrons feel the pull of protons. Protons feel the pull of electrons.
(McFadden, pg. 108)
So let us return
to the player kicking a ball now. Big objects have an electrically balanced mixture
of billions of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. As
noted before, the charges tend to cancel out. However, when surfaces of sneaker
and ball come close enough, they experience a mutually repulsive
electromagnetic force. What that means is, in all of that action they never
reach a point when they actually touch. There is always a thin line of space
between them. The ball moves because the molecules on its surface move away
from the molecules on the surface of a sneaker. Huh?
What happens
then, when we touch? On the molecular level it never comes to it, actually. What
we experience as a touch is our skin´s surface moving away from the surface of
the person we are touching. Our preceptors note that pulling away and our brain translates
it as a sense of touch. Therefore it is impossible feel each other. It is also impossible to claim you feel someone, in the actual meaning. We only translate it
as such. In a way Aristotle was right when he said our senses lie. Well,
they do not do that. What is a lie is the perception, not the action.
When I first
read about that I felt awfully lonely. The true nature of reality tells me
there is nothing romantic to a human body. It stays alone, untouched and hermetically
sealed within its shape. On the other hand, it developed senses that help us
reach towards one another. We may never be together in a literal sense or truly feel each other, but
we sure as hell can translate that as touch.
The physics
might speak its language explaining the reality we live in. That does not mean
reality is grim. There must be a reason for sentient beings like us to have developed
senses. I like to think of sense of touch as the most important, the most
powerful one. Touch plays a great role in our lives. All the comfort and
consolation comes from it. The bearing of one´s pain comes from that. Sensual experiences
are supported with that. Sex is great because of that. Can you imagine life
without touching? Well, you do not need to do that. You already live in a world like
that. But can you imagine a world that is unable to translate it? Have that
in mind next time when you feel someone. And see how precious it becomes. It is, after all,
the only real communication based on wordless lie you will ever have.
And there is
that.
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