A Note on Dark Matter

I was just thinking about dark matter, how powerful it is, how it is the beginning of us all, the mother, the Eve, thee eve. Dark matter is undetectable, yet robustly influential on the universe and evolution, and black holes let nothing escape–not light, not stars, not galaxies. At the latter’s edge, time appears to stop and at its core, matter shrinks to infinite density and the known laws of physics break down. And I thought my mother was an overbearing and powerful mystery. You. Don’t. Know. Her.

My mother was a war drum who talked about eating red dirt as a little girl, whose life was saved by putting piss in her ear as a baby. My veins are not blue but green, guaranteeing nothing except connectedness to dirt. This means I am real.

Still, I stand beside white lines of lies and delusion, where shaming the devil and speaking with veracity might just be considered an act of violence, and assist. Not infrequently I wonder when I might, she might, we might shame the devil and speak the truth, connect poor Nefertiti back to her roots. She’s been in Germany a long time. But then pride proceedeth the fall and few egos rival the self-regard of monumental northern aligned tomb skyscrapers.

Kemit itself represents this shame, a denied mother whose seeds sprouted into things chopping at the trunk and picking off the leaves, refusing to splash a little water to relieve over-cried eyes. Be then still reasonable; though they left black and returned white, the root itself cannot be killed, though time and space have joined to assist in a catching of lust, a belief in supremacy, an easier way out or in—vanity. And so taking credit for the brilliance of the pyramids helps build nations because it helps build identity and esteem. Can you believe the mortar is stronger than the stones?

This denial of dark matter—mother, the universe, people—and this superior fact of black, woe little black, is touted as something evil when it is more than the root; it is the cure. Is not our earliest experience with dark the shade of eyelids during rest? 

I cannot blame capitalists, really. The window of motivation is wide open like legs of a great whore tempting a take, the wealth of her being to make celebrity the inheritance of a gold mine. The real issue is greed. It’s unreasonably strived upon to be a star; already we are born of stardust and back into the elements we will ascend. Forgetfulness, no ignorance, of these things is in some the way endurance is in others. Theirs and ours, how odd.

To be a supernova some beck, while others plot the future of their great, great grandchildren, striving for immortality, becoming an ideal packaged to be sold and bought, a guarantee of what is to come, an unbreakable mirror. Such are the ways of a righteous man. It is all about choices, no? A star’s death is not caused by another; it dies from within, but I bid dark matter too resilient for that, although this resilience is promoted as a posturial stance diminished into a representational crawl. Perhaps it is the matter of looking back, instead of just remembering; recalling instead of just knowing; reacting instead of just acting. A star dies when its atoms no longer fuse to give it energy; they become a stellar core remnant made up of electron degenerate.

What happens after a star’s death depends on its mass. Life after death, yes. If a large star’s mass is sufficient enough it might become a black hole after its collapse and the explosion of its outer layers into a supernova; if too small it forms into a neutron. Either way, massive stars live fast and die young, exhausting their nuclear fuel swiftly before going out with a bang. The death of an average star is slower coming; when there is no longer heat to support the core against gravity, the hydrogen burning continues in a shell around the core and the star swells into a red giant before shedding its outer layers and forming a planetary nebula. Eventually, the carbon core will cool and become a white dwarf, the dense remainder of a once bright star. Though dead, it is still hot and thus still shines, albeit dim.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:53-55
“It’s necessary for this rotting body to be clothed with what can’t decay, and for the body that is dying to be clothed in what can’t die. And when the rotting body has been clothed in what can’t decay, and the dying body has been clothed in what can’t die, then this statement in scripture will happen: Death has been swallowed up by a victory. Where is your sting, Death?”

To the believer, what is death and what is dark? Does not the Most High join the elements–His creation– and birth forms a new? Don’t we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28)? Do we remember the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen (Matthew 20:16)? Is harmonization not an act of faith, as with the “one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren” taught in Acts 1:14? As evident with the day and the night, and the seasons and the generations of stars, and as with King David himself, who “had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.” ( Acts 13:38) Do we act with faith, hope and love in the knowledge that nothing moves without Yahweh, the Creator of all things, seen and unseen?

PSALM 8:1-9
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord,how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Are you in awe, like King David, a man after God’s own heart?

So abundant are the blessings of the Lord, we can only see a small percentage of his handy work; all the atoms and light in the Universe together make up less than 5% of the total contents of the cosmos–the rest is composed of dark energy and dark matter. Praise Him: “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.” (Exodus 34:6) Who are we that the Lord might be gracious and longsuffering (long-tempered, that is)?

That’s Love.

©2022 Margery Hannah. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Margery Hannah

    “A writer writes, aways.” (Larry Donner, Throw Mama from the Train) The musings of Margery Hannah, a multi-genre writer, on an array of subject matter through a literary lens. Every raindrop has a story.

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