mostly empty space
Neil Theise offers a quick and wonder-filled dip into systems, physics, interconnection and impermanence in Notes on Complexity: highly recommended to those of us brought still by a consideration of what is and of our evanescence in its midst.
Since reading the book, I have been strangely comforted by the thought that we are mostly empty space.
All the way from Higgs bosons to the furthest galaxy, subatomic particles arise into "existence" and immediately subside into mere potential. Only a few stick around to give substance to what is. Arise, subside.
You and me included.
And we are both mostly empty space at that.
Just enough matter/energy to prevent us walking through each other.
I made the images in this letter with presence and absence in mind. And a feeling of connection.
Notes
Toronto's first known burial site is Taber Hill, dating to 1250 CE. Wendat villages have been been excavated nearby.
SimonP, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital buried patients in unmarked graves on a site squeezed between a freeway and a four lane thoroughfare.
Descendants of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes are too often among those buried there. The history of criminal Indigenous burials is being uncovered, one child grave after another, across the country.
In 1826, the city established the Strangers' Burying Ground, for those excluded from Christian burial. The remains of those buried there were later moved to the Toronto Necropolis. The site is home to luxury shops now, one of which has the only dedicated sidewalk cut for valet parking on the city's east-west artery.
In Mememiam. Edith Singer Mancuso 1921-2022. Requiescat in Pacem.
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