The Gravity Saga

A Sci-Fi story coming one day. Words and thoughts in the meantime. Www.gravitysaga.com

[gravitysaga]

11.14.21 - Love & Lupron

Every three months, that shot wrecks her Praying food stays down an hour longer Hair falls out, sleepless nights in tears My Beloved, tired of fighting, please stay near I don’t talk to gods anymore, haven’t in years but for you, I will fall on the floor and beg For our sunrises to shine upon your smile We chose a road less traveled as long as… We walk it together, you and I… We walk it together, please stay near I’ll carry you when the path isn’t clear We have dreams of children to rear There’s a bright horizon out there Past the reach of cancer and fear Where you and I walk, hand in hand Up snowy mountain hills and trails Northern Lights to guide us home My arms around you to keep warm Even when we’re old and gray Even when we’re ghosts We have a future that’s bright We see it past these dark clouds We’ll walk it together, you and I All I need, this love, you and I

(Tonight’s album choices: Carole King’s Tapestry and James Taylor’s Live at the Troubadour)

Truth is, I don’t know what to do here anymore. Life has a funny way of changing your priorities when you’re a daydreamer hit with the sudden realization that you don’t have long left to leave an impact. And then life keeps on hitting you, relentless and unyielding. We had a string of hospitalizations since last November. We had a relatively healthy summer, but never a honeymoon. We have a strong love, but weak bodies. And now, she’s back on a chemo drug to fight the embers left behind from the cancer that took away her ability to naturally birth a child.

She’s found a career she loves, one that has her trampling the patriarchy by turning a wrench. We have embryos, sitting in a rented freezer for six hundred a month. We have a deadline of five years to find a way to bring them into this world, if we can afford the expenses. Not her fault, but she blames herself. I do the same. It’s what you do when you love someone. I would spend everything I have just to make her happy. I have her, and that’s made me richer than I could ever imagine…

So, in the meantime, I’ll look for another career path. I gave teaching my all, but I had nothing else to sacrifice for, at the time. After a dozen years, I’ve cried over my classroom for the last time. A wife that’s brave enough to face cancer and a Master Mechanic apprenticeship, so I have to be brave too… she deserves nothing less. I don’t mind working, but I have more than myself now to work for. “Grief is love, unrelenting.” We grieve the easier paths others take, and wish them the best.

We spend our weekdays grinding through a minimum wage. She sleeps Saturdays, trying to keep down rice and crackers. I rub her back, wishing I could take the pain for her. I dream of houses we could fill with food and laughter, garages full of old cars we rebuild. I hope I can give it to her, so I write stories since that’s the only way I know to process this grief I feel building. So many wasted moments, so many missteps, we could have found each other long ago. I hope she reads them one day. I hope she knows I wrote them all in the longshot, lightning strike, lottery odds chance that my stories might pay for our dreams, our children… all these tears.

It’s not fair. Everyone says that. I’ll cry in silence, let her sleep. She needs my strength, and my love. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, even when we’re ghosts. I have no regrets. I just know, for her, I’ll never stop fighting. Because life by her side, even when we’re both broken and dreading the morning alarm, is better than anything I could have dreamed for myself.

Rich in spirit, rich in love, rich in bank account balances. We get two out of three if we’re lucky. So I’ll keep writing these stories, and hopefully one day this site will be where people read the updates and see the sacrifices we made, and understand how powerful our love was to see us through all those sad days and dreams that seem so far away.

[gravitysaga]

8.22.21 - Spectrum Sage on a Stage

Teaching while on the Spectrum might look like mainlining cocaine or speed Yet it’s really anxiety-soaked adrenaline pushing daily seven-hour manic states Come home, crash, weekend cries until the shakes stop but sleep never comes A decade of internal doubt, of constant failure, fear of being seen as a liability The job is important. Science must be taught with conviction rivaling zealotry While a world shuts down borders and free thought, reason and medicine Threadbare hope, grains of success not measurable during observations Motivate with all the optimism and joy in the tank, leaving nothing for thyself

[gravitysaga]

7.29.21 - Handle With Care

We’re all a little bit broken, from time to time When the bad days stack up, like the dimes We don’t have to pay the bills, we stay behind Wishing for a break, praying for peace of mind Anxiety rings louder when another bill arrears And we dig our way out or dig down, deeper All hearts beat, despite daggers of despair Always, dearest remind me, handle with care

[gravitysaga]

5.25.21 - Watched you leaving before you walked away

Lost in places we’re supposed to feel safe  In dark spaces, time spent tempting fate  Looking for despair in low corner of self-hate  Dreading looming disasters in nights so late  Marriages tested before honeymoon phases  Lost count of worthless evenings, wasted days  Miles between pillows, bridges retracted up  Dreaming of only one person’s touch, so much  I see it before you do, then, and always  Wander far, through unfamiliar hallways  Prefer distraction since it’s easier to avoid  Anyone’s company is better than noise  Starved for attention and unladen affection  Disappeared for days, unanswered questions  Alone in our empty bed, math adds up poorly  Ain’t real if it takes a drug for you to love me 

[gravitysaga]

4.16.21 - Diets of Distraction

Rome was not burned in a day It suffered an agonizing decay Pillars raised in golden streets Finery and art, exquisite treats Fattened off the backs of masses Blind prophets cried of salvation Wastewater wage middle classes Starved, practicing diets of distraction

[gravitysaga]

3.18.21 - Thought Experiment #2

3/18/21

Watched a YouTube video in VR about exoplanets. Only regret is I did not find it sooner. Trappiste-1e, standing on the surface, looking at rocky stalactites that curve up out of the planet’s surface like teeth. Above, an emerald borealis, reaches up to the true depths of space. A red star, larger and closer than the moon, filled the valley with a ruby-hint of light. Other bright, colorful orbs passed around, like marbles swirling down a slow cosmic drain.

Forty light years away.

But, when describing how exoplanets are theoretically formed, one of them said something odd. “We aren’t really sure what determines whether or not two large asteroids, stick together or not when they collide.”

There was a graphic of a star casting a golden hue over a wide, glistening asteroid belt. Some larger rocks cast shadows on others, like skaters dancing across a spinning disc of ice. I thought about it. What if it is not random, but just the odds of certain conditions?

Two asteroids must be on a certain path, to collide right before they pass under the shadow of something else, like a more inner planet. Depending on the difference in temperature under the shadow, the asteroids might warm up under starlight, enough for their core materials to get ‘sticky,’ and then they collide under the shadow once they start to refreeze. Just the right time, and gentle enough difference in speed, they fuse together. Happens enough times you get ten kilometers wide rock, which I read was the minimum size required to create a gravity well. They pull in more rocks; over time it snowballs. Boom, protoplanet.

But I confess, my knowledge is limited. I just like looking at the stars. I will have to research further. God, why does that sound like fun?

If we could chart the debris path of some asteroids passing in the shadow of something, I wonder if it could be proven? Or at least predicted.

The plan, or part of it, this summer, is to spend the days reading, writing, and working out. Get back to my core. Reading list below looks good.

The VR video is below.

Take a Virtual Reality tour of six REAL exoplanets (4K, 360° VR experience) | We The Curious

[gravitysaga]

3.15.21 - Thought Experiment #1

I’ve been thinking about outer space my whole life. This worked for Einstein, so I figured I’d at least write it down.

To create interstellar warp drive, the kind used in Star Trek and rationalized by Alcubierre, you have got to create a pulling force. Like the cartoon about dangling a treat on a stick, tying it to the dog’s collar, and watching the cute pup run as far as its legs can carry, but it feels like falling down a black hole.  

Think about it, a black hole bends space and time, the same as bed flat at every edge stretches and bows under the weight of a bowling ball. Near-infinite mass at the center of the hole has a pull so strong that light cannot escape, and time slows down.  

Time slows down because the fabric of space-time stretches around an object that has so much mass, its own field powerful enough to slow down pure energy. Gravity creates waves, invisible ripples that can be felt billions of light-years away, moments where our reality elongates momentarily, distorting like a glance in a funhouse mirror.   

What happens if we try the opposite?  

So, what else can create a pull, like mass? Energy can. Electromagnetic fields do, on a much smaller scale that still powers technology like laptops. 

Electrons are responsible for this. Impossibly (for us to fathom) negative charges that race between objects, pushed on by the electron behind (like charges repel), and pushing the electron in front.  

Electrons also have a pull, infinitesimally small, on other particles, the cores responsible for mass, protons, and neutrons. Move enough electrons, and those Higgs-Boson particles that give us mass, trapped in the nucleus of atoms, start following. There is strength in numbers, especially exponents.  

We can collect electrons easily enough, at the cost of pulling them from atoms of other things. There is only so many of them in the universe. Conservation of Mass and Energy are intertwined Laws, after all.  

If you imagine the Higgs field as an invisible river, a ‘fabric’ of space-time that surrounds us and flows through us so much like pebbles in a cold current. The friction between water and rock is felt by both. The water’s path changes, and fraction of its energy is absorbed by the rock, traded for a few atoms. Erosion, entropy, time, all the same, all decay. The Higgs Field moves like the ocean, with gentle peaks, valleys, undercurrent, and energy.  

So, take that field and stretch it, never mind how, not yet. If you stretch the Higgs Field like taffy, you affect how quickly time passes. Faster at the ends where it’s denser, and time slows down in the stretched-out middle, where the ‘stuff’ is less dense and frailer.  

What about distance? That is affected too. Best guess is the same way, distance get closer at the ends, further in the stretched-out middle. 

How would this appear to us? We would not notice. We are too big, wrapped up in our own small reality to feel the subtle songs of the fabric of the universe. 

But then again, there is the whole exponential power thing. See, with enough energy, you can make big stuff move too.  

Build a ship that can disrupt the flow of the fabric, the same as current around a rock. Make a bubble of energy around the ship, that allows the field to flow past and the ship crosses distances in the mere wink of an eye.  

How do we make that bubble? Alcubierre field, create a specialized electromagnetic field that repels electrons and atoms out of the way the same way a rock dropped in still water pushes it out, or a diver forms an arrow to pierce the water. Make it a bubble, the electrons will move all around it, out of the way, carrying other atoms with them.  

The ship inside the bubble moves forward, towards the open space free of matter, a vacuum in front of it, that pulls it forward. Same as a vacuum cleaner pulls forward, ever so slightly, while cleaning up the mess from a mud-covered dog, panting from a run in the backyard, and happy with itself because it figured out how to break that treat free from the stick. 

[gravitysaga]

2.20.21 - Perseverance and Pathogen

Jailed for preaching the gospel of Aristarchus Galileo’s agnostic legacy tarnished as heresy Digital bits mined from spilled blood of prophets Gambling, not pot, legalized by Wall Street

Scientists gained control of Mars this week In an alien lake, our machines dig deep Ancient truths sleep, hidden far below But, Republicans broke Texas with snow

Oil banks blamed a few windmills frozen Snake-charmed by Don Quixote’s poison Inoculated against scientific truth, prose, or Earth’s omens- tempests, a decade before

Neil’s moon-dust Apollo boots exhumed For blind Inquisition in evangelic Senate What holy wars await behind golden doors If NASA finds signs of ancient life on Mars

[gravitysaga]

2.13.21 - Homes, Heartbroken

I can’t fix what’s going on in her head  Reliving nightmare days pass, in bed  Wrist suspended from the wall above  Zip-tied by ghosts, false tortured love  Mute tears, a scared girl’s  past world  Post-traumatic tragedy sleeps curled  Knees tucked, frail skin, hunched over  Medicated isn’t much better than sober  One scarred arm rests arm over her head,   Memories play back, first-person cassette  Until the arm comes down, wait at her feet  Just soothe her back, ‘till the terrors abate  Date, location, dog, husband, home, bed  Words can’t reach her, repeat them, yet  She looks up, trembling big, brown eyes  Love? She asks, strokes the puppy’s thigh  Lazy tail thumps, content squish-face sigh  Love. All is right. Yet a moment, she cries  Unraveled another thread, unbound lies  Love has no need of noble hero to fix her   Gentle arms heal broken hearts better 

[gravitysaga]

1.14.21 - The Land of COVID and Insurrection 

Recalled fragments, thought by spider thread  An anxious cursor blinks, retyped a dozen times  NRP echoes unread love letters ‘tween tense  Headlines that dim a frigid sky soon and sooner

The oven never heats, yet it spews sour flame  Pizzas burned in minutes or never thawed.  Woken from a cold dusk haze by bell tones  From one masked, forced smile to another

Twelve more minutes on a cracked screen timer  Fifty degrees higher, listen to the hollow hiss  Who was within six feet for fifteen minutes  Thirty six hours past. Fear, yet hope, for fire 

[gravitysaga]

1.13.21 - On Consequence

A week later and we’re all still here  Witness to ruin, result of abject fear  Not of pillars and glass concrete domes  But men, by their own actions, undone 

 Lives splayed open, shame bared raw  Hastily scribed epitaphs in digital scrawls  Weep not for seditionists betrayed fall  Accountability over divisiveness, for all

[gravitysaga]

1.6.21 - Sue Infamy

Glass broken in a thousand fallen shards  Grey matter shattered by false Red hats  Fates heard these drums beat, once anon  Over distant lands and other gory shores    Maws that guzzled up corn syrup, not history  Gleeful greed-fattened hearts unfurled Rome  Hate wraps words on bricks flung with fervor  Before crumbling hospitals close their doors    Pasty dissonance so loud the towers tremble  While Privileged fan fires, led by Denier's guilt  Cities burn, while heavy clouds refuse to weep,   Apollyon’s mad mouth sewn chaos now reaps

[gravitysaga]

12.17.20 - Pandemic Poetry #3

Made up stories to keep warm countless nights, wasted lives slinking into other skin,  All grown men, turns out, are really, still just boys dreaming of being a race car driver.  We look for ways to distract ourselves from these cold grey days, walling ourselves in  Frozen lakes of silenced quarantined promise, praying this spring thaw will revive her. 

[gravitysaga]

9.4.20 - letters without addresses #1

Hey there, Psyche. Damn, I know it’s been forever  Decades passed in silence, then only a shitty letter  Though they say an asshole never really recovers  This ass hopes you found far better friends and lovers   Whisky brown hair, brilliant smile, the fairest blue eyes  Sharper and brighter than all the stars in Southern skies  Just one second, this ain't one of them pining love songs  More a long-waiting tattered lists of souls I’ve done wrong  One bad night, drunkenly convinced I’d been strung along  I became another toxic creep, another entitled hard-on Flashes of trembling hands, tears took up shop in my head   But I blacked out enough to not remember what all I said  When really you needed a best friend, not a jealous loser  Instead, I walked away, wanting only to not exist to you  It’s been years since then, paid in therapy reckonings Took a while to learn, romance starts by looking within   But still, what’s worse, digging up the past or living lies  What hurts, late-offered amends or broken goodbyes  For a victim, how long makes it too late to apologize?  Male-privileged obsession is just intimidation in disguise   So, years later, here’s the truth that only matters now  The important thing I hope I one day get to say to you  If allowed, I have random chance and courage to do  Psyche, you deserved better than I ever gave to you   My selfish words and actions burned our bridges  There aren’t any good reasons you should forgive  ’Sides, justifying turns into gaslighting before long  I’ll move along, just sorry that I hurt you. I was wrong

[gravitysaga]

8.20.20 - Pandemic Sonnet #1

Hot rain pounded on square, concrete tombs Our opinions overrode data, famous last words For single-pained souls across a gasping globe In empty classrooms, ghosts talked to screens Smiled and pretended that everything was clean Science toiled cures, scrubs-clad martyrs screamed Scholars silenced, pleaded safety not guaranteed Wise words twisted, gathering dust on toxic pulpits Whilst pious, fat hypocrites proudly flouted lessons writ In their treasured, leatherbound, ancient moral scripts Pride becameth Fall for faithless worshipping a Con’s greed Falsely-winged devout demanded sacrifice, so blinded They offered up children to a righteous Death Cult idol Blame for self-evident sins falls upon poisoned, Holy men

*notes and such Two lines I liked but couldn’t figure out how to tweak and use. I still think this needs some re-arranging, but it needs to get out of my head for a while.

Omens in six-foot deep ends justified by green means Foreshadowed in testing, autopsies backdated two weeks,

[gravitysaga]

7.1.20 - Pandemic Poetry #2

We all scare, a little, here Crowded, breadcrumb beds That sound, light, or touch Would drown tearful fears This pain that clings to us Memories on a slow burn Hollowed out the dreams Years repeat in night’s sleep

I make my last rounds during the witching hours Check the locks, tiptoe past all my sleeping wards Still, toiling away during the quiet night creeps While in the bedroom shows stream in hopes of Crowding out their darkest remembered dreams They breathe slowly and softly cry out in the dark One last race before I lay down my worried head Dreaming of apex turns instead of counting sheep

[gravitysaga]

6.2.20 - Pandemic Poetry #1 - Better Men and Broken Kings

Stay safe in these hectic moments, loves Sit down, wash your weary hands clean Your tired shoulders, bloodied and battered Choking on the pale embers from fellow men Still gasping for air, begging, you tell stories Desperate is the need to be heard and received Dare us to look in the mirror’s harsh light Reflected back, something isn’t quite right Beaten, blackened eyes that have seen People pleading, loving, despite our sins Warning, crying for whomever next reads No one wins while greed and hate prevail Never stop hoping, never just give in Treat each other better, make art and love So the universe will celebrate our dreams And deeds of Better Men and broken kings

*due to uncertainty on how to best utilize social media, I have elected to not include tags that might be needed for providing important information regarding the current crisis facing the world, but I’ll post the picture below from Atlanta, 2016. I was there and witnessed people peacefully marching for equality that has been promised for centuries yet never truly delivered. I hope we find a way through this and in the meantime, I’ll be here, listening, writing down stories. I would love to hear yours and share a few tears.