BANJO BLUES

There in the sink is a speck. I reach for the wash rag. And just as I'm ready to wipe it out, it moves! There are tiny wings, and I have stopped just in time. So delicate.

In the blink of an eye, a reflex, the gnat is saved.

Ordinarily one does not zoom in on such events. This was more or less routine. But then wondering at this tiny life like me, and for some reason, why wonder?

It goes on. I recognize an infinite regress, a hall of mirrors set up to reflect themselves endlessly.

Remember in science class viewing a drop of water under a microscope? How far down, life like me? So as far as I'm concerned, an absolutely spotless sink can wait, and . . . where did it go? Isn't life fascinating?

Later in the kitchen, while chopping an apple, the scale of it kicks in -- I am to the gnat as it is to a microbe. We are both conscious to some degree, approximately in proportion to our physical dimensions.

A gnat is consciousness?

The universe is to me as I am to a gnat. It's a calculable proportion, but more importantly a metaphor, a springboard to unimaginable vastness, energies that have prepared for this consciousness.

My neighbor might be embarrassed should I speak of the consciousness of a gnat. A rock? The biosphere of this planet, with all of us, and not one of us who is separate from the universe.

On the evening news we've seen a remarkable sight, the first ever image of a black hole in space, theorized to exist 100 years ago by Einstein. But how can we actually see it? The gravity is so intense that no light can escape. The image is a triumph of reason.

Around the black hole is an absorption layer, consisting of remnants of material it has swallowed and ejected. Being so close and in a field of intense gravity, the absorption layer spins around at extreme speeds, causing it to heat up and glow. And the glow encircles the black hole, making a bright indicator that can be photographed.

Another triumph of reason is found in the study called quantum mechanics. In that field, there is a problem with getting direct measurements. They alter what they measure. It might be this is an artifact of current mathematical methods, but a way around the difficulty is to prepare the particles of interest in an entangled state with particles that can be observed without directly measuring the particles of interest.

The methods used to image black holes and make indirect quantum measurements are both ways for reason to discover what eludes the senses. In this, some understatement my be discerned. Reason is not the only way, however. There seems a notional distance from the life of a gnat to the universe of which it is a part, which is not difficult to span with reason. There is also the way of direct appreciation that does not rely on measurements, eludes the senses.