~Meniscus Archives~
Summer/Fall 2005
Issue #8
Science

Issue #8 Home

 

Hijacking the Big Bang Theory
Derek Meier
Today, religion is being replaced by luxury worship, where to have is to be fulfilled. Buying is the new praying. American Express the new holy bread and Master Card the holy blood of Christ that we must consume for eternal life and understanding...

Surviving and Flourishing Through Cancer
Rachael Wilcox & Jon Heinrich
This November 5th The Wellness Community of Greater Boston will host an art exhibit and fundraiser to commemorate the stories of lives touched by cancer. The afternoon event will feature work by artists Stephanie Angelo, Lorna Ritz and Rachael Wilcox. Through the use of different mediums from painting to sculpture, the reception will display the triumphs and legacies of cancer patients, their stories told visually. Meniscus Magazine had the chance to catch up with ceramicist Rachael Wilcox to learn about her wholehearted contribution to the cause.

Introduction to the Quantum Octave Theory
Jon Heinrich
It is through physically evasive mediums that music lives. Both music and physics exist through the same cosmic rule of Eight. When notes flowed through Jerry’s guitar, where did they come from? The notes come not only from just within him, but within us all; alive or dead, organic or inanimate, here or there. He is cutting past manifest reality. Something is happening on a metaphysical level, here's my theory.

 

Published 9/18/05
Photo: Nasa - Two gallaxies colliding in NGC 6745.

 

I just hijacked The Big Bang Theory. Not the porn video, but the scientific theory of universal expansion. From the beginning when matter was a flaming hot, dense ball, to today’s fragmentation and constant expansion through out the depths of darkness in the unknown landscape of shadow. This expansion of the universe is constant so that the condition of the universe today will be nothing like the condition of the universe in 30, 100 or 10000 years from today. Now, let’s extrapolate and say that the big bang theory applies to ideas as well as matter flying through space and constantly fragmenting into smaller pieces. Pieces that fly infinitely apart, eternally. One example is religion. Religion, a group of ideas, that through time, fragment into several parts. One with a pope and one without, some with guilt and some with kindness, some with a fiery hell and some with no afterlife. And then it gets further fragmented as rules change along any given line. This fragmentation of ideas applies to every idea, not only religion, and the net effect is the destruction of one entity and the creation of another. If everything expands, fragments and then ceases to exist what does this say about the future of Earth or the ideas on Earth? I haven’t a clue. But, perhaps humans can recognize this pattern and the natural progression of the universe as eternal expansion, and then find harmony by aligning life to this natural pattern. We are part of a divine magic act. We didn’t choose to be here, or maybe we did, but we wouldn’t know it if we did, and we find ourselves here as part of this amazing show that is both a comedy and a tragedy. I have to laugh, then tears drop as I realize how lucky I am to be down here.

Today, religion is being replaced by luxury worship, where to have is to be fulfilled. Buying is the new praying. American Express the new holy bread and Master Card the holy blood of Christ that we must consume for eternal life and understanding. To have and own is to be alive. Driving a range rover and delivering babies at every possible female gestation interval is to be American royalty. I go on match.com and send winks with reckless abandon after four jack and cokes. I have found religion. Behind my apartment is an alley. This dark alley is a living journal of life where shady things happen and scattered remnants tell a story. One of sex, colored rubbers, shot-gun shells, missing homeless person clothing, grocery carts, beer cans an occasional needle, or coke vial. And the garbage cans were overflowing which meant that tomorrow was garbage day.

I drove down the alley fast but it’s a good thing I have a habit of stopping when I reach the end because there was a woman walking a four-child stroller at the end of the alley and I thought to myself how happy I am that I stopped, but that didn’t hold back the grimace she held my way because she knew I had been racing down the alley. She was bitter, and she wanted me to know it and join her in it, maybe she just wanted someone to join her in her attempt to quiet the four infants she was pushing every day as a result of the good work they had been doing last winter at the fertility clinic downtown. It was just last week that I saw this woman kneeling on the floor at the Louis Vuitton store on Michigan Avenue in a deeply religious experience, one in which fluids were lost and hands held tightly a logo, which carries within it a meaning as deep as a cross or a star. Separation causes pain and growth. When your dog dies, your girl friend leaves, your parents die, the Oprah show is discontinued… it hurts because matter attaches itself to other matter (gravity).

Then it blows up and scatters. Sometimes painfully. We call people who live in their lives with fragmented thinking disengaged and crazy. Then we medicate them. We should build an altar to their existence and worship them, as they are closer to the natural form of the universe than our selves.

To align yourself with the universe is to embrace your ADD, to drink more alcohol to generate more divergent and fragmented thinking.

F r a g m e n t a t i o n.

Derek Meier

 


Meniscus Magazine © 2005. All material is property of respective artists.