Read Online Weight by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeanette Winterson
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material was amixture of light elements, like hydrogen and helium, along with heavier elements thrown out by an earlier generation of brief stars. A shock wave or an exploding star prompted the nebula to condense into a galaxy of proto-stars.
In one of these proto-stars, material concentrated to form the proto-sun. Gas and dust around it collected into a flat rotating disc. Over the next thousand years or so, the disc cooled, and grains of solid matter began to freeze. In the hot inner region, they were silicate rocks. Further out, there was watery ice, and further out yet, frozen methane. These grains moulded themselves into mile-long lumps, bumping, breaking, colliding, but sometimes co-operating to form the planets.
The four planets closest to the Sun – Mercury Venus, Mars and Earth – are small rocky worlds. The next four planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are gas giants. Pluto is more like a moonthan a planet. There is no life except here. Planet Earth. The Almost, the Proto, the Maybe . Planet Earth, that wanted life so badly, she got it.
Beside me, the lamp still glows. Here I am, turning and turning the lit-up globe, leaning on the limits of myself.
What limits? There are none. The story moves at the speed of light, and like light, the story is curved. There are no straight lines. The lines that smooth across the page, deceive. Straightforward is not the geometry of space. In space, nothing tends directly; matter and matter of fact both warp under light.
If only I understood that the globe itself, complete, perfect, unique, is a story. Science is a story. History is a story. These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true.
What am I? Atoms .
What are atoms? Empty space and points of light .
What is the speed of light? 300,000 kilometres per second.
What is a second? That depends where in the Universe you set your watch .
Let me crawl out from under this world I have made. It doesn’t need me any more.
Strangely, I don’t need it either. I don’t need the weight. Let it go. There are reservations and regrets, but let it go.
I want to tell the story again.
I want to tell the story again
Long ago, this violent planet of radioactive rock had learned to become home.
Atlas had loved the earth; the crumble of soil between his fingers, the budding of spring, the slow fruit of autumn. Change.
Now the earth changed but Atlas had stayed still, feeling the tilted axis rotate against his shoulder blades. All his strength was focussed into holding up the world. He hardly knew what movement was any more. No matter that he shifted slightly for comfort. The monstrous weight decided everything.
Why?
Why not just put it down?
* * *
Atlas let his hands go from the sides of the world. Nothing happened.
Atlas put his hands down in front of him on the floor of the universe or the ceiling of stars, I don’t know which, and then he stretched out his left leg so that he was kneeling on all fours, the Kosmos balanced on his back. Laika was running in and out of his spread fingers. She had never seen her master move.
Atlas crawled forward and then suddenly fell flat on his face with hands over his ears and the dog clinging on to his thumb. Atlas waited, rigid with doom. The dog waited, her nose in her paws.
Nothing happened.
Write it more substantially – NOTHING .
Atlas raised his head, turned over, stood up, stepped back. The dog’s nose lifted. Atlas looked back at his burden. There was no burden. There was only the diamond-blue earth gardened in a wilderness of space.
All that we can see is only a fraction of the universe.
Some matter is detectable only by its gravitational effects on the rotation of galaxies. This is called dark matter and no one knows its composition. Dark matter could be conventional matter, like the small stars called Brown Dwarfs, or it could even be black holes.
Or it could be Atlas holding up the
In one of these proto-stars, material concentrated to form the proto-sun. Gas and dust around it collected into a flat rotating disc. Over the next thousand years or so, the disc cooled, and grains of solid matter began to freeze. In the hot inner region, they were silicate rocks. Further out, there was watery ice, and further out yet, frozen methane. These grains moulded themselves into mile-long lumps, bumping, breaking, colliding, but sometimes co-operating to form the planets.
The four planets closest to the Sun – Mercury Venus, Mars and Earth – are small rocky worlds. The next four planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are gas giants. Pluto is more like a moonthan a planet. There is no life except here. Planet Earth. The Almost, the Proto, the Maybe . Planet Earth, that wanted life so badly, she got it.
Beside me, the lamp still glows. Here I am, turning and turning the lit-up globe, leaning on the limits of myself.
What limits? There are none. The story moves at the speed of light, and like light, the story is curved. There are no straight lines. The lines that smooth across the page, deceive. Straightforward is not the geometry of space. In space, nothing tends directly; matter and matter of fact both warp under light.
If only I understood that the globe itself, complete, perfect, unique, is a story. Science is a story. History is a story. These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true.
What am I? Atoms .
What are atoms? Empty space and points of light .
What is the speed of light? 300,000 kilometres per second.
What is a second? That depends where in the Universe you set your watch .
Let me crawl out from under this world I have made. It doesn’t need me any more.
Strangely, I don’t need it either. I don’t need the weight. Let it go. There are reservations and regrets, but let it go.
I want to tell the story again.
I want to tell the story again
Long ago, this violent planet of radioactive rock had learned to become home.
Atlas had loved the earth; the crumble of soil between his fingers, the budding of spring, the slow fruit of autumn. Change.
Now the earth changed but Atlas had stayed still, feeling the tilted axis rotate against his shoulder blades. All his strength was focussed into holding up the world. He hardly knew what movement was any more. No matter that he shifted slightly for comfort. The monstrous weight decided everything.
Why?
Why not just put it down?
* * *
Atlas let his hands go from the sides of the world. Nothing happened.
Atlas put his hands down in front of him on the floor of the universe or the ceiling of stars, I don’t know which, and then he stretched out his left leg so that he was kneeling on all fours, the Kosmos balanced on his back. Laika was running in and out of his spread fingers. She had never seen her master move.
Atlas crawled forward and then suddenly fell flat on his face with hands over his ears and the dog clinging on to his thumb. Atlas waited, rigid with doom. The dog waited, her nose in her paws.
Nothing happened.
Write it more substantially – NOTHING .
Atlas raised his head, turned over, stood up, stepped back. The dog’s nose lifted. Atlas looked back at his burden. There was no burden. There was only the diamond-blue earth gardened in a wilderness of space.
All that we can see is only a fraction of the universe.
Some matter is detectable only by its gravitational effects on the rotation of galaxies. This is called dark matter and no one knows its composition. Dark matter could be conventional matter, like the small stars called Brown Dwarfs, or it could even be black holes.
Or it could be Atlas holding up the
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