A thing of beauty
The day is a blank sheet when waking up this morning.
I spent some time during the midnight hours to sit quietly reading in our
sitting room. Carlo Rovelli write lucidly and some people might even understand
everything what he wrote about in HELGOLAND. To start off with: I didn’t even
know who or what HELGOLAND is or was or might be? Was it a science-fiction
thriller? What does HELGOLAND mean?
My one friend lent me his book; while we were chatting,
we had a relaxed meal that his wife prepared for me and my wife. They were
sitting there, and us two were sitting here chatting about all sorts of things;
we were not discussing loadshedding or politics. There are enough exciting and
motivating things that keep us busy and making sense of this world.
Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli
HELGOLAND? Unhospitable. Wild. Drought stricken. Off
the grid. The birth place of quantum physics! Werner Heisenberger might be
labelled “the father of quantum physics. Carlo wrote on page 3:
“On the
island of Helgoland – barren, extreme, battered by the winds of the North –
Werner Heisenberg lifted a veil. An abyss opened. The story that this book has
to tell starts from the island where Heisenberg conceived the germ of this
idea, and progressively widens to take in ever bigger questions opened by the
discovery of the quantum structure of reality.”
An abyss? That is what Carlo calls the “discovery” of
the quantum structure of reality. If I understand it correctly it means in
essence that it is never ending?
Carlo Rovelli is a most brilliant scientist endowed
with this clarity of spirit, clarity of mind and skillsets working with words
to bring the most complex ideas about how the world is constructed to lay
people like me. And yet, there are such a lot of things that he must have taken
great pains to explain, that are flying like Boeing aeroplanes above my head.
It is way above me. And yet, he also states, for what it is worth, that quantum
physics are a mystery. Indeed. A mystery – this mystery changed the way we
think about our existence on its head. It has had a profound influence on
scientists who are still struggling to work it out and in so doing, they are
making huge contributions towards our understanding of the world we live in.
And Werner Heisenberg? What does he say about this
lot? On June 7 1924 he wrote [page 13]:
“At
first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to
see a strangely beautiful interior, and felt dizzy at the thought that now I
had to investigate this wealth of mathematical structures that Nature had so
generously spread out before me.” [My emphasis]
This wealth … that Nature had so generously spread out
before us – and we mere mortals may participate in this wealth that is spread
out before us.
A thing of beauty - once again
I was walking outside on our pavement [or in other
words: the sidewalk] when I noticed something out of the ordinary; so strange
and stunning it defies logic and words. It was lying on the road surface
waiting to be picked up and to be admired. It was this seed covering just lying
on the road surface.
Botanists will be able to tell me much, much more
about this thing of beauty; things that I don’t know at this moment. Somewhere I
think, there will be a “Carlo Rovelli” in the world of botany who will be able
to identify it and who might just go on and describe to me that finer details
of this thing of beauty. In the meantime, I am just loving it. Oh yes, I remember
Prof. Elizabeth A Johnson’s ASK THE BEASTS DARWIN AND THE GOD OF LOVE
And I am reminded of one day back in 2009 when I was
wondering around in the veld at Hopetown in the Northern Cape; I was baptised
in the Dutch Reformed Church there in 1950 when it was still in the Cape
Province. Things do change in South Africa and now it is in the Northern Cape
Province.
I was all by myself soaking in the colours of evening
fast approaching, feeling the light breeze of the change over from day to night
time, and taking one photograph – not more, just one photo. I felt somewhat out
of place because I am not used to walking alone out in the veld especially when
it is completely foreign territory which it was. All of a sudden, I was aware
of something pricking my legs; ah, well, I thought, it is just the veld grass
scraping my skin. And I tried to brush it off.
Guinea fowl skull
Guinea fowl skull
Guinea fowl skull
Guinea fowl skull
Guinea fowl skull
Guinea fowl skull
Then I turned completely around to look behind me to
the changing colours and be in the moment. Down below, on the soil, stuck and
entangled there I saw a sight that keeps on coming back to me: lots of
scattered feathers of a birds remains. I was standing on this site where this
bird was killed; my inference was that it was killed because the skeleton [what
was left of it] and its feathers were scattered over a wide area. Well, it
might have been weather conditions that sprinkled it around over some time.
When did he/she came to such a violent death?
And stuck high up in the grasses swaying around in the
wind I saw the skull of this guinea-fowl. Back bending and with the greatest
dexterity I loosened it from the grass; it did not relent easily on the
stronghold on the skull. “Please,” I whispered to the grasses, “I just want to take it home as a memento mori of my
visit to Hopetown, the town I was baptised in many, many years ago. A memento
mori.” It was a tempus
fugit moment. At that moment I was oblivious of time; of wind, of the
changing colours, of twilight, of every thing around me. It was a thing of
beauty in the veld waiting for me to “rescue” as a memento mori moment. I
still have it.
When I picked up that dried out seed covering on my
pavement, I was silent. No words in my mouth. No words in my mind. It was so
serene and silent: the same silence I experienced in the veld in Hopetown.
And I re-read Werner Heisenberg’s words I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to
see a strangely beautiful interior, and felt dizzy …
Please write me your story: neelscoertse@wirelessza.co.za
