what if love is just gravity
I stood in line once to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson if love was gravity. He laughed at me and said not unless you gain weight from eating ice cream as a result of heartbreak. I felt foolish for asking. It was around 10pm in an amphitheater near Hayden Planetarium after he spoke about the relationship between war and astrophysics in recognition of his book, Accessory to War. This was one of only two talks he would give about this, the second being at the Pentagon. I was the last one standing in the aisle with a burning question I spent months contemplating. Maybe he was tired.
It came to me while reading his book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry on the ferry from NYC to MV the summer I was 30. If everything, as Neil so clearly states, is defined by the universality of the physical law then wouldn’t our emotional and spiritual processes be descendants of physical laws. They can’t be alien forces. Everything is of Nature.
It got me thinking. What if love is a spiritual manifestation of the physical law of gravity. If there is mass, there is gravity, if there is gravity space is curved. And isn’t that every relationship. One determined by the laws of gravity? This candle on the table flickers upright. I sit without floating away. He met me on the J train platform at 1am. The bench in Washington Square Park after church. The hot spring in Taos. How paths intersect, how magnetic the chemistry.
What if we’re a cosmic experiment in the multi-billion year evolution of consciousness tasked with the possibility of making love manifest. That maybe it’s our job in the highest sense. This was my theory.
My exuberance blurted out like a popped champagne bottle to the strangers sipping out of their red cups on the ferry decks. “Woooow, that’s deep. She’s deep. What if I’m in love with you?” Clearly, they weren’t my key audience.
The thing is Tyson’s talk leaned more towards entertainer seeped with a good dose of cynicism. He expressed sitting with a group of men utilizing their tools and intelligence to determine where and how to drop bombs during the war in Iraq and when asked if he felt like a sell out his response was along the lines of; “listen. the government is always knocking on your door waiting for you, waiting to use the intelligence of astrophysics for war. It’s been happening since the invention of the telescope.” It seemed like it was his own coming out speech that carried the tone of its not all stars and glimmer folks, they’ll get you any way they can. So you might as well give in.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to have something people in positions of power want. I can imagine getting cynical after awhile. I can imagine it’s part of why he shrugged at my silly question. Love. Pshhh. Who’s got time for that. I’m part of much bigger decisions. Technology. Gadgets. War. Men in suits at round tables.
Ahhh, yes war. So sexy we’ve made it. Please dress up in your red cameo with rifle slung over your shoulder and take me out to dinner this valentines. Mmm, can’t wait to rub up against your grenade and talk death in bed.
Now it’s my turn to be sarcastic. Because I don’t know why exactly we’re still killing each other. Google wars today. If we are as Tyson writes, “stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out,” what part of the figuring out is obliterating each other while the temperature continues to rise.
I like to think of us, you and me, from the stars perspective. Where it was always written. The potential of our carbon. How the balanced neutrality propels us forward. How unbiased the elements. How dedicated the dust. That there is something to the energetic pull beyond rational thinking. Beyond the systems we made up. Beyond the sense I try to make out of it when the electrons go there separate ways.
A woman ran up to me after Neil deGrasse Tyson’s talk that night. “Hey, I just wanted to say I think you’re right. I think love is gravity.” A validation that I’m not alone. And what if we acted like it was. Would we behave differently knowing our being was the result of billions of little moments based on relativity.
Hours after the ferry docked and I awoke from my daydream slumber having soaked in thoughts about my new theory, months before Tyson’s response would sink my heart and the female stranger would pick it up again, a friend took my hand and said come here I have to introduce you to someone special. “Carly I want you to meet Alison”. Not just any Carly, Carly Simon. And do you know what 72 year old Carly Simon said to the 30 year old me, “I’ve met you before,” even though we hadn’t, really, unless you count me washing dishes at a party she attended once when I was 19. “No I remember you,” she reassured me, “I remember your feet. You have cute feet.”
Call it what you will. It certainly doesn’t make sense but I think the universe in all its gravitational energies has one hell of a sense of humor.
Photo: blurred sunset, Nikon D7000