I’d first noticed it when I’d started tutoring Chris in chemistry, revisiting the cosmic dance between electrons and protons that permits both cars and cats to exist. I had uncovered a wonder in him about the way things worked at this tiny, tiny level…. In trying to explain life we have reduced it to a series of chemical reactions, whether it be the burning of glucose in mitochondria to create energy, or the folding of proteins to make bile, or pollen, or blood. Zoom out to where we perceive things, the titanic mathematics of it all is silent. We have twisted our thoughts and feelings into all sorts of psychological origami about whether these things are a result of evolution, intelligent design, or creation ex nihilo, and for all we know, our little planet is the only place that holds all of this wonder in a void that is too staggeringly huge to conceive.
I am utterly caught by the poetry in these lines. So clean, so beautiful, and so thoughtful.