Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Bathroom Monologue: The Monopoly of the Abyss

Humans and the other animals of earth are much more alike than they are different. No, I don't have fins or wings, but the bones in fins and wings are remarkably similar to those in the human hand. Certainly more similar than a planet or a chunk of ice. If you haven't noticed, that's what makes up most of the other matter in the universe. Comets, moons, asteroids, planets and stars are really dissimilar to a fish or a human. I am indisputably more similar to a carp than I am to a burning sphere of plasma. Furthermore, I'm more similar to a carp than I am similar to nothing. Nothing actually makes up the most of the universe. Emptiness. The void is the overwhelming majority of this universe. The earth is roughly 12,715 kilometers in diameter. That's taller than me, but we are 149,600,000 kilometers away from the sun. We are 41,000,000 kilometers away from the nearest planet, Venus, which is itself only 12,100 kilometers in diameter. Compare 12,100 of something to 41,000,000 of nothing. That's a lot of nothing at all. Nothing and nothing and nothing within a solar system, of all things. In comparison to that infinite emptiness, that simplicity that is too simple to be simple at all, I'm not like it at all. In comparison to a 1.7-meter gorilla, well, I see a lot more resemblance.

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