Tuesday 1 December 2009

In the Future when All’s Well


Or

An overly contrived, complex and confusing scrawling pertaining to the mysteries of the universe, time-travel, mathematics, folk legends and why my life is getting shiter by the day.

Nuclear physicists are trying to unlock the origins of the universe and the Big Bang Theory by smashing together proton beams in the monstrous structure known as the Large Hadron Collider in the world’s biggest ever science experiment. Not sure it really needs that pre-fix with its 17 mile tunnel buried 300 feet beneath the surface on the borders of Switzerland and France. The biggest mystery lies in the origin of mass in the universe. Our current best theory includes a mechanism for generating the masses for all the particles in the universe called the Higgs mechanism. The holy-grail of these experiments is the search for the predicted existence of the Higgs Boson particle.

This is where things get weird. Some scientists have gone on record as saying that this enigmatic particle will never be found because it will come back to sabotage the past to keep itself from being discovered – it will literally usher space gremlins into the LHC’s mechanisms for a spanner-throwing bonanza and bring this beast to a grinding, shuddering halt. The machine has already spluttered into inaction once taking 14 months to get it up and running again.

A similar thing has been occurring in my own life. I’m not sure the perfect future that I envisaged from an early age can ever be achieved either. A strange intangible force has been busy sabotaging my own destiny as the Higgs Boson particle could be sabotaging the past for reasons as yet beyond our understanding.

As a young kid (of 9 or 10 years old), when I wasn’t poring over copies of 2000 AD or playing Uridium on my ZX Spectrum I was prophesizing about the future. I could see it all mapped out before me in inexplicable but vivid visions that were accurate to the point of blinking at the flickering shadows of my future actress wife’s form playfully dancing across the plaster of our boudoir’s candle-lit walls…

…She is correcting the slant of an incredibly detailed landscape painting (probably one of mine, although she’s wonderfully talented too) before slipping off her lacey white neglige as she slides between the satin sheets of our four-poster bed. The Rocky XIII soundtrack plays in the background. Posters of Winona Ryder and Yoda are somehow acceptably pinned to the surrounding walls. This is the future, the year 2000 and we are adults. Why would she be anywhere other than here in this beautifully secluded detached house of a movie writer/director who had even put in a few critically acclaimed cameos in his own films that had left the Hollywood establishment puzzling as to why he didn’t play the lead roles too? She is beautiful, blonde…

…for a while. Then her hair became sleek, black and she stopped being an actress and became a singer/songwriter who played guitar.

Although this metamorphosing girl undoubtedly loved me unrequitedly for some reason she never really uttered ‘owt. This didn’t seem to be a problem. She was effortlessly graceful as she flounced about the place.

Bear with me a second, this is getting slightly confusing. I’m now talking in the past tense about a perceived future that was dreamt up long ago but is apparently now a history that never occurred. Sheesh.

Er, anyway, I guess then we made love (or I fumbled under the Star Wars duvet cover with a copy of the Freeman's catalogue and a torch or something).

Of course, the futuristic year 2000 came, went and is now so passé that we can guffaw at its ludicrous video games, plod–rock nonsense, stupid candles and sleek black-haired, guitar-strumming nimbies with the knowledge that this would have been an awful future for all concerned. Albeit, mainly because of the atrocious music.

And this is where my own physics and mathematical equations come into things:

The thing is, there’s a point I believe according to my extensive deductions, where ‘the amazing possibilities for the future become outweighed by the stupid see-saw of time-passed, plus self-preservation instincts, divided by crushingly random unfair disappointment, multiplied by thoughtful wishes about tomorrow, divided by being abjectly realistic finally, that equals the dreamt-of perfect destiny impossible’. 

Or, more clearly:


(S.S.S.O.T.P. + S-P.I /
[C.R.U.D. * T.W.A.T. / B.A.R.F.]
~(P.F.T.F)
= 0.0000%

How awful.

I wonder if this is true for everyone. There’s probably not even a particularly memorable incident that pushes you beyond the point of never achieving your dreams. It might just be as humdrum as an instance where both of the local shops within slipper-venturing distance have run out of Wispas. It doesn’t seem a big deal as you trudge back home (cursing the laughing kids in the playground near to your house) but you’ve just tipped the scales beyond recuperation. Because of this minor disappointment you can’t be bothered to stop and answer that random questionnaire thrust into your face that would have seen you invited onto Gok Wan’s How To Look Good Naked. Subsequently, you’ll never meet that camera operator from the show who thought your bravery was second only to the amount of weight you’d lost in four weeks and proposed marriage live-on-air.

And you’ll never skid on that discarded lottery-winning ticket, breaking your nose in the process - it can’t all be good, c’mon. You can afford to get that shit fixed.

Oh, and you’ll pile those pounds (that you never lost) back on.

I think I might have tipped the scales. I hope not. I just kicked the same drink over for the second time. The signs aren’t good. And I had a dream last night…

...The candles fizz out. The painting on the wall looks like Munch’s The Scream but I’m sure it’s me standing on the bridge. The windows are open and in the moonlight this actress/singer wife girl thingy appears to have started to turn gingery-grey and grow fangs. There are strange pointed knobbles protruding down her exposed spine as she clambers over the fag-burnt bed covers drooling. I’m sure I can see horns in the shadows, and a tail. I think she’s the hag from a myth that we were told as children that stalked Eastfield Park - the Grey Lady who could be summoned from the stone statue in the circle of trees. And she’s waited all these years just for me. Shit...

Higgs Boson? What a rubbish name for a potential god particle with time-travelling abilities and a mischievous sense of the saboteur.

What do you mean this is a ridiculously tenuous analogy?

Here’s to the future when all’s well.