The Dust Did Roar

A Collection of Poetry and Essays on Science, Love, and Cheese

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  • Waking Nightmare

    After a pleasant weekend spent relaxing and not worrying about the impending Atomic Physics module exam on Wednesday, I arrived at the Physics Honours student office on Monday ready to put my head down for two days of intensive studying.

    I was near the bottom of the class and this was the hardest module of the year. I would need to put in a lot of work to even stand a change of passing.

    That was when I noticed something unusual.

    All the other students were already in the office.

    This was odd.

    I had consistently been one of the first to arrive in the mornings up to that point in the year.

    The hazy outline of a dreaded thought began to take shape in my mind, but I quickly relegated it to the background. I concluded that, like me, the others were just eager to get stuck in.

    As I sat down at my desk and began to get out my laptop and my problem sheets, I noticed something else.

    Everyone in the office was incredibly stressed.

    That was weird.

    Considering the exam was two days away, why was everyone rushing to get answers to questions from the top students as well as hastily writing down their crib sheets?

    That dark thought began to come into sharper focus. It pushed its way forward but I refused to acknowledge it. I put my head down and started my prep for the exam.

    If I could ignore that terrifying notion long enough, perhaps it would all turn out alright?

    A few minutes later, the lecturer in charge of the Atomic Physics module, poked his head through the office door and Germanically asked:

    “Is everyone ready?”

    All the students affirmed that they were.

    All but me.

    As my composure slowly began to crumble and the grim veil of realisation gradually lifted, I looked towards the student directly across from me and calmly asked:

    “Do we have an exam today?”

    “Yeah, in about ten minutes.”

    In truth, I already knew the answer. I just needed it said out loud before my mind would finally relent and stop avoiding the truth.

    As the full weight of my predicament set in, I began to panic.

    I stood and ran straight up 3 flights of stairs towards the office of our course convener.

    My only choice was to beg for mercy.

    I threw myself at his feet and, as calmly as I could, explained my dire situation to him.

    He took pity on me and said that I could write the paper the following day, as long as I didn’t talk to any of my fellow students after they had completed the exam.

    I profusely thanked him and returned to the Honours office. There I attempted to slow down my thundering heart beat and focus on all the sections I still needed to revise.

    After several hours, a slow trickle of exhausted students started to pass by the open door of the office. Almost all of them would look in at me with a peculiar expression, like shades drifting on their way to the underworld passing the last remaining prisoner on death row.

    I spent the rest of that day in mind-numbing silence and solitude.

    The next day I sat down to write the exam alone in one of the empty undergrad labs.

    Our course convener had a policy of exams having noset time limits, trusting the students to know when they had exhausted themselves.

    I wrote for 6 hours.

    As I came to the end, a sickly ironic realisation crystalised.

    The previous day of studying, that I had been mercifully given, had made absolutely no difference at all.

    I could’ve written the day before with zero preparation and the result would have been the same.

    As I left the Physics building, I already began to chuckle to myself. Even if I failed, which was exceedingly likely, I had a damn funny story out of it.

    To this day, I still have no idea what partial-marking-magic enabled me to pass that Atomic Physics module.

    Not an Illustration of Neutron Stars causing gravitational waves by R. Hurt

  • Star Crossed

    (Or Longing for Euclid)

    Goodbyes are hard,
    but so are hellos.

    Quickly you begin,
    to feel their warmth.

    Remembering the Light,
    that you shared.

    Once you were entwined,
    dancing the Elliptical dance.

    In your eyes, they were the Sun
    that birthed the day.

    But somehow,
    you became broken.

    Two intersected lines
    in a Euclidean void.

    Destined to meet,
    then forever be parted.

    But here they approach,
    and now you know.  

    Your loss will be lifted
    but all too quickly returned.

    So give in,
    drink in their radiance.

    You will have need of it
    for the voyage ahead.

    A trek across,
    the elliptic firmament

    Lonely,
    but filled with memory.

    The only thing I remember from studying Romeo and Juliet in high school was learning the true definition of ‘star crossed lovers’. I originally thought it meant two people who were destined to be together, but it was explained to me that it actually meant a couple that are fated to be parted.

    At a later point in my life, the above definition sparked a thought about the nature of straight lines in classical Euclidian geometry. In this type of space, any pair of straight lines that are not parallel will intersect exactly once and never again. To me this sounded like the true meaning of ‘star-crossed’. Lovers to meet and then be forever parted.

    But the real world isn’t Euclidian, and in most cases, romantic relationships are not ‘star-crossed’. Very often you will run into previous partners again long after things ended. The feelings that this type of interaction can spark are complicated and sometimes difficult to process.

    People change over time, get into new relationships, acheive new successes etc. The desire to ‘win the breakup’ is an idea that we often think of when interacting with previous partners.

    But this isn’t a healthy way of interacting with anyone, and just leads to feelings of resentment and hurt.

    We are all complex bodies moving through space-time. Our paths will cross but we should not cling too tightly to others lest we fall into a collapsing orbit from which we cannot escape.

    Romeo and Juliet (1968) by Franco Zeffirelli

  • Certain Uncertainty

    A couple weeks ago I read a post by another creator. The post was about how they instinctively avoided topics in which they felt a high level of uncertainty, and they cited astrophysics as an example of a field of certainty.

    This struck me as an odd choice due to what I learnt way back in my first year physics lab.

    Uncertainty is simply inescapable when conducting science. Let me explain. I promise not to get philosophical about it.

    The basic flow of a scientific study is straightforward.

    1. Form an hypothesis
    2. Conduct an experiment and measure the outcome
    3. Reject the hypothesis if it contradicted by the experiment

    Now, what does it mean to ‘measure’ something? The answer depends on what you are trying to measure.

    If you need to measure weight, you would use a scale. If you need to measure length, you would use a ruler.

    In the end, you need to get a value of some kind. Even when you are measuring binary outcomes like whether something exists or not, you are needing a value of some kind to tell you whether you actually detected its existence or not.

    The uncomfortable truth is this: you can never actually measure this value.

    What do I mean by this?

    If you are attempting to measure the weight of an object, what you are attempting to know is the true value of this intrinsic property. However, this is not the value you are measuring.

    Instead, what you are measuring is the effect that this intrinsic property has on your instrument, in this case, a scale. The intensity of this effect is related to the value of property, but they are not the same thing.

    Say that you had an object that you wanted to know the weight of. You place it on a digital scale which reads 8.00kg. You might be tempted to say that the object’s weight has been measured to be 8kg. But, this is not the case.

    The truth is that you do not know whether the scale has actually measured 8.005kg or 7.995kg. Either measurement would be rounded to 8.00kg due to its limited display.

    Okay, but why not just build a scale with 3 decimal places?

    Well, a similar argument could be made for making a scale with 4, 5, or even more decimal points.

    Now I’m going to break my promise: let’s talk philosophy.

    In Plato’s allegory of the Cave, a group of people are imagined inside a dark cave with only the ability to look at a particular wall. Upon the wall is projected a series of shadows, cast by objects and a great fire behind the observers of the wall.

    Plato’s Allegory of the cave. Image from Getty Images.

    Plato claims that because the observers can only perceive the shadows of objects and not the objects themselves, they can never know the true forms of what they see.

    It is then argued by Plato that while humans perceive various ‘shadows’ of ideas in our daily lives, such as the various kinds of chairs that exist, we can never truly perceive the true ideal of what a chair actually is.

    While it seems silly to relate ancient Greek philosophy to modern science, the idea that humans are fundamentally limited in our ability to perceive reality has been a recurrent theme in modern science.

    From Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, in the last century science has been confronted with the truth that it is unable to perceive reality perfectly.

    This might lead one to ask why we even bother to practise science if we know it is fundamentally limited?

    On the 14th of September 2015 the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves created by the merging of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away from Earth.

    LIGO managed to detect these gravitational waves by measuring a distortion in the fabric of space-time less than one thousandth the diameter of a proton.

    By understanding the uncertainties inherent in their measurement, and taking steps the minimise them as much as possible, humans had managed to build an instrument sensitive enough to ‘hear’ the universe.

    For our entire existence, humanity had only been able to use light to observe the night-sky. But now, we can actually hear the crash and roar of cosmic events that occur around us.

    By understanding our limits and acknowledging our uncertainty, we can still perform wonders.

    Illustration of Neutron Stars causing gravitational waves by R. Hurt

  • Los Alamos or Bust

    Arlene(Arline)

    Deep in the desert,
    The Sun does beat.

    In a flash there is born,
    A twin star to meet.

    But all too quick,
    The light is gone.

    One of her children,
    Sets off at a run.

    The day has come,
    The final break.

    Clouds long gathered,
    A single mistake.

    The journey is lonely,
    He stops for companions.

    They ask his job,
    He says “I build dragons.”

    The road stretches out,
    Vast as the ocean.

    BANG

    He comes to a stop,
    To find the commotion.

    A tire is flat,
    Our voyage is stalled.

    He walks for assistance,
    A replacement is hauled.

    “Why do you drive?”
    “To say goodbye.”

    “To whom do you fly?”
    “Someone soon to die.”

    The dance that was stolen,
    A twisted paper bow.

    Moments made clear,
    Love made to grow.

    BANG

    Fate is cruel,
    Another blown?

    Heads stay calm,
    No need to bemoan.

    Longer has been the trial,
    Yet all too short.

    A sterile room,
    A gentle fort.

    Once filled with smiles,
    now nothing but breaths.

    A final strained one,
    The body now rests.

    It’s 9:22,
    A nurse confirms.

    Her sweet scent lingers,
    He can’t come to terms.

    It’s 9:22,
    the world has ended.

    It’s 9:22,
    There is work unattended.

    Roads feel empty,
    Sand covers them more.

    BANG

    He raises his fist,
    Fury to the core.

    He screams to the sky.
    knowing nothing is there.

    “Well Dick,
    Do you want to share?”

    “She’s dead Jim,
    any news on the Japanese?”

    A dress in a shop window,
    His heart begins to freeze.

    “Arlene would have liked that.”
    He crumples to his knees.

    I’ve never been in love.

    But despite that fact , or maybe because of it, I do appreciate a good love story when I see one.

    In my first year of university, I asked one of my physics professors for some recommended readings. One of them was Richard Feynman’s The Character of Physical Law.

    For those who don’t know, Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was a success physicist who eventually jointly won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Before this, he worked as a junior physicist at the Manhattan project in Los Alamos which would eventually develop the atomic bomb.

    While looking through the casual reading nook inside the university library, I noticed there was another book related to Feynman. It was a collection of writings of Feynmans on his life and work. To my surprise, there was an entire section of the book dedicated to stories about his first wife Arline (Arlene).

    They could be called high school sweethearts, but that simple cliche would miss-characterise the depth of their relationship. Even decades later, the affection and care that Feynman felt towards her is apparent in every story shared about their time together. But sadly, there is another cliche they fall under:

    Tragic love.

    Arline got sick. And by the time it was confirmed as tuberculosis, it was too late.

    When Feynman began working at Los Alamos, project director Robert Oppenheimer ensured that Arline was placed at a hospital in nearby Albuquerque, so that Feynman could go to her when the time came.

    On the 16th of June 1945, the time had come.

    He borrowed a friends car and drove to Arline. On the way, he experienced 2 flat tires.

    He is there at Arline’s final moments, then returns to Los Alamos. He gets another flat tire on the way back and he loses his cool.

    Once he is back, he throws himself into work not wanting to talk about it. Only much later does it hit him.

    Tragedy and Love are so often intertwined in human experience. Romeo and Juliet. Orpheus and Eurydice.

    I thought about how this love story could easily be a movie just about this final car journey. But since I am no Hollywood screenwriter, I decided to write it as a poem.

    I hope I did their story justice.

    Arline Greenbaum and Richard Feynman

  • Boys Don’t Cry

    I was always a very sensitive kid.

    That’s what being an only child will do to you.

    I cried all the time. Particularly when I lost a fight in Judo. I didn’t want to cry. I really didn’t. It just happened. I knew it was pathetic and that the right thing was to take the loss ‘like a man’.

    I think that’s why, as I’ve gotten older, I became so afraid of crying. It always felt like a sign of weakness for others to use as a reason to dismiss me.

    Many years went past without a single tear except, perhaps, in solitude when watching an episode of Friday Night Lights.

    Last year was probably the worst year of my life. Eventually, at a breaking point and in the middle of one of my few truly depressive episodes, I let myself cry. And it felt good.

    Then I lost my furry best friend and I cried again.

    But a couple weeks ago, at a good friend’s wedding, I experienced something that I hadn’t before.

    Happy tears.

    It’s true that they began with the mention of a tragic loss in my friend’s life, they soon became more because of the honest and real display of love before me, and the gratefulness I felt to be amongst so many close friends and loved ones.

    Someone passed me a tissue and for the first time, I didn’t feel shame for crying in front of others.

    Turns out the old adage is right.

    Boys don’t cry.

    But Men do.

    Forever Prince of Fashion

  • Multitudes

    Alone, adrift in the dark current.

    I feel the solitude pressing,
    tight enough to pluck my life entire.

    Pondering whether to step off my raft,
    and let the waters consume my fire.

    But from the East, with the wind,
    is carried a voice,
    bringing with it a glimmer.

    A dazzle of light,
    that feels both cold and harsh,
    but gives me hope.

    I am not alone.

    Sorrow for the other compels me to return in kind,
    but the sound catches in my throat.

    I struggle to release my reply,
    yet I cannot.

    I must give the other a warm ember,
    to reignite their hearth.

    I stand and throw my spark,
    bright and blinding,
    as a chorus to echo far.

    I stop when there is little left
    than ash to burn.

    Quiet descends upon the world.

    I await another sign,
    but there is none.

    As silence again becomes familiar,
    thoughts of the icy embrace return.

    As they crescendo,
    a lone signal is spotted on the horizon.

    Slowly yet steadily,
    it begins to birth multitudes.

    Soon the once grim and suffocating darkness,
    is broken by the light of my fellow stars.

    Twinkling, guiding
    us to the fated shore.

    Every faded ally,
    a victory.

    Every new constellation,
    a bond reforged.

    I honestly can’t remember what specific event triggered me to write this poem. From the context, I was probably feeling pretty lonely at the time. But that’s about all the insight I can give you about my state of my mind when writing this piece.

    Reading it back, I certainly respond to the imagery of being a solitary point of light gradually finding oneself within a field of others. The obvious reference is a sea of stars but I do also have a soft spot for the scene in the 2010 Disney film Tangled where Rapunzel and Flynn Rider are in the middle of a lake surrounded by paper lanterns. Now that I think about it, lanterns and candles are a common symbol for someone that we have lost. It’s interesting that when releasing them, we humans never do so one by one, but in a large number. Perhaps it is a common wish that even in death, we never find ourselves alone.

    I actually entered this poem in an international poetry competition last year organised by Rotary International. I thought that it fit the theme of people bringing light into dark situations and finding others who do the same, quite well. It didn’t win anything of course. I knew that when I entered it since it was one of the earlier poems that I had written, but it still felt good to get it out there and helped me build the confidence to start this blog.

    Tangled by Walt Disney Animation Studios

  • Why I Love Paul Simon

    And she said “Losing love is like a window in your heart
    Everybody sees you’re blown apart
    Everybody see the wind blow”

    Friendships can be wonderful things. They can also lead to a lot of hurt.

    Many of you reading will probably not know the name Paul Simon, but you may know the name Simon & Garfunkel.

    They were a musical duo that started as childhood friends at the age of 12. A mutual love of music and harmonising brought them together. Eventually, they achieved mainstream success with their single “The Sound of Silence”, written by Paul Simon.

    However, their relationship became strained and led to their breakup in 1972. They both went on to pursue solo careers, with Simon arguable finding greater success. Despite their persistent issues, they reunited several times over the decades to perform together. But each time, they found reasons to separate again.

    While I was aware of Simon & Garfunkel’s most well songs, I only became exposed to Simon’s solo work when I picked out a vinyl copy of ‘Graceland’ to play on my father’s record player.

    Immediately drawn to the familiar South African rhythms and instruments, I decided to lookup the background behind how Simon came to produce such a non-traditional album.

    The album ‘Graceland’ was created in the aftermath of the collapse of Simon’s marriage to Carrie Fischer (Yes, THAT Carrie Fischer.) Simon happened to be given a bootleg cassette tape of South African music and became obsessed with its unique sound. He ended up flying to South Africa to record with local artists, including the soon-to-be world famous Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

    But the true strength of Paul Simon has always been in his lyrics.

    I may not have been in a marriage that fell apart, but in 2015 I was experiencing an emotional fallout of another kind. I remember not having anyone else to talk to, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have known what to say.

    In a weird way, Simon’s lyrics became the words that I didn’t know I needed to get out into the open.

    There are too many favourite songs to gush about so I’ll keep it simple and just talk about one.

    ‘The Obvious Child’ is the main single from Simon’s 1990 album ‘The Rhythm of the Saints’. It’s an energetic, percussion heavy song but about 3/4ths of the way through it slows down and becomes surprisingly melancholic with the following verse:

    Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself
    How it’s strange that some rooms are like cages
    Sonny’s yearbook from high school
    Is down from the shelf
    And he idly thumbs through the pages
    Some have died
    Some have fled from themselves
    Or struggled from here to get there
    Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls
    Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair

    The line ‘Some have fled from themselves‘ always struck me deeply.

    Taking my father to rehab for the first time as always felt like a truly defining moment in my life. Almost all of my decision making afterwards has felt like it comes from a deep desire to run away from that traumatising memory.

    Sitting alone in my father’s apartment, listening to these words gave me some level of comfort that I can’t entirely describe.

    So much of art is about making a connection to the artist, and the above example is one of the reasons why I still feel so drawn to this short, quiet kid from Queens with his guitar and his words.

    Paul Simon on SNL, 1993

  • Charcoal

    The Dancer weaves her many arms,
    Slowly rising toward the night sky.
    A dreaded goddess given form.

    Her days in the sun are past,
    back when the Earth was young.
    Her fingers reaching higher.

    Drinking the nectar of life,
    greedily she hide it away,
    Within her bower.

    Now deep in slumber,
    in the halls of Gaia.
    She feels the weight of eons.

    Long did the dark corrupt,
    Stripping bare the flesh.
    But her boon yet remains.

    Now it proves precious.
    A diamond without glamour,
    more brilliant in purpose

    Besooted they delve,
    to raise up her bones.
    The children of iron.

    A new life she is given,
    Light against the darkness,
    a warm embrace against the cold.

    Not without a price,
    but who is she to deny?

    The dancer performs her last,
    before returning to the stars.

    First off, yes, I know I mixed up charcoal and coal. It took me way longer than I should have to notice this obvious mistake. But at the end of the day, it’s all carbon in one form or another.

    This poem is one of a small number I have written that is not inspired by my own experiences. I wrote it after a friend shared that their Ex wrote a song about them they thought was very unfair and hurtful. I decided to take a crack at writing something that they could be proud of. Their professional name is Charcoal and so I decided to go with a literal interpretation.

    The process of creating coal and creating diamonds is not too dissimilar. Formed deep underground, they are made by decades of high pressure. I thought about all the struggles that my friend had gone through and how it made them a stronger person. But also how they felt that others often wished to take advantage them for their own desires. The analogy felt very obvious to me.

    When I shared the poem with my friend, they responded to the final stanza the most. I had added it very last minute, when thinking of the ultimate fate of a piece of charcoal, the smoke from a campfire twisting and swirling as it rises to the night sky. I wasn’t thinking of my friend at all, and yet my subconscious chose to picture them as a dancer. My friend has since started training in dance.

    Perhaps this is a lesson to not always go with the most obvious interpretation of a subject, but to rather let my imagination steer me and trust that it will guide me to where I’m meant to be.

    Candle Smoke Structure by Tigerzeng

  • The Window

    To my great shame, I have never read A Long Walk to Freedom.

    Growing up in South Africa, the story of Mandela is so wrapped up in the story of the country itself, reading his biography can feel unnecessary. I thought I knew all there was to know about his life.

    That’s why I was surprised when, while attending a Sunday morning service at St George’s Cathedral, I was deeply affected by a detail shared by the presiding pastor.

    He mentioned a painting drawn by Mandela after his release, in which he illustrated the view from his jail cell on Robben Island. The pastor described the all too familiar silhouette of Devils Peak, Table Mountain, and Signal Hill, that are shown through the bars. But as the pastor quickly noted, and which I had already realised, this is not actually the view one can see from cell 46664. Having been to Robben Island several times, I knew that this window only looked down into the prison courtyard.

    I was truly surprised when I found myself tearing up.

    Being born and raised in Cape Town, the site of the mountain has always given me a great sense of comfort and safety. When returning from a trip overseas, I never truly felt at home until I could glimpse those green and grey slopes during the car ride back from the airport.

    If you lookup the other drawings in this series by Mandela, they all depict various parts of Robben Island, like the harbour or the chapel, in a relatively realistic fashion. Mandela’s choice to depict the view from his cell window as the distant land that he surely hoped to return to one day, struck me very deeply.

    I’ve not made it a secret that this year has been a awful one for me, and I have often caught myself during the course of this year, being unable to look ahead and think about the future. I have been so bogged down in the troubles of the present, I was staring at my feet unable to take the next step along the road.

    The thought of Madiba choosing to see this symbol of defiance and freedom rather than the confines and hardships of his prison, effected me greatly.

    We might not be given a choice in the windows we are given in life, but we are always free to choose the view we see through them.

    The Window by Nelson Mandela

  • I Know They’re Wrong

    In the Beginning, they said
    there was nothing.

    To me, the Universe was
    born with your smile. 

    René said she strode
    from my own mind.

    Now she is gone, 
    playing in another’s Dreams.

    Albert wrote that days
    would quicken at her approach.

    Yet it always feels
    like Twilight in her absence.

    Isaac decreed my walls
    would fall at her gaze.

    But her scent,
    would lift me to the Heavens.

    Kurt showed not even
    the great sage can know all.

    Deep within her eyes,
    I could swim within Eternity. 

    Stephen pictured the darkest
    corners filled with light.

    In my heart, only the
    Ghost of her radiance remains. 

    Edwin observed, 
    the fleeing of the stars.

    Like her laughter, 
    an Echo slowly fading away.

    Niels measured the
    distance between things.

    Now I know why
    her Touch felt so soft.

    I had the idea for this poem while I was dating someone. It was a super nerdy expression of devotion. But before I could actually write it down, the relationship ended abruptly. Several months later, I decided to create the poem anyway, thinking it might help me find some sort of answer. But as I began to write the first words, it quickly evolved into something very different to my original idea. I had changed as a person therefore, the poem had to change with me.

    In some ways, I am sad that I never wrote that original version. But if I had, the version that you see above would never have existed. The title ‘I Know They’re Wrong’ doesn’t make sense for the poem as it is today, but I decided to keep it as a way to honour that version of me that had the original idea. Me before the heartbreak.

    Art changes over time. Despite what we may think, it’s never static. One of my favourite books when I was younger was the Earthsea Trilogy. It depicts a fantastical archipelago of islands containing dragons, wizards, and shadowy demons. The original three books were written between 1968 and 1972 by Ursula Le Guin. Years later she decided to revisit the world of Earthsea, largely because of the criticism the male-oriented nature of the first trilogy received. As a response, she wrote the novel Tehanu, a deeply reflective book on the place of women in society. She later wrote the final book of the Earthsea series, The Other Wind, which upended the very concepts the original novels were based on.

    By the final lines, I found the world that I loved as a child far richer than I could have imagined before and I only wished that I could express my gratitude to Mrs. Le Guin for allowing me to join her on this journey.

    Cover of Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula Le Guin