intoxicated mischief

prose

I’ve been writing another entry for a magazine. The theme is whimsy and i really struggled to think of anything whimsical. But then i thought about it again, the world, science, religion. Can it get anymore whimsy than that?

The universe, it turns out, runs on mischief. A fickle chaos bending space and time at its will. 

Scientists call it probability, but I suspect the atoms are laughing at them. I imagine they sit around a table at a tea party, gossiping at the human need for explanation. Inside each teacup, molecules jitter like children told to sit still. The heat – their excitement leaking, their microscopic giggles vibrating across porcelain. 

The trouble with science, is that it keeps discovering things that feel suspiciously like magic and give it a far too sensible name.  

Take gravity.

An invisible game of tug of war that keeps the sea from wandering off and persuades an apple to reconsider the home it was born from. We cannot see it, bottle it or shake its hand – and yet we arrange our entire lives around the assumption that it will continue to behave. 

That feels a lot like faith. 

Consider: light.

Oh, light refuses to categorise itself entirely. Wave? Particle? Both? Neither? It flickers between identities like a celestial shapeshifter and dares to prove us otherwise. Scientists have built entire branches of physics around it depends how you look at it. 

So, I suspect the universe is not as serious as we make it out to be. Yes, it contains thermodynamics, black holes and neurotic equations – but it also contains the platypus, bioluminescent plankton, and that peculiar way toast always lands butter-side down, as though gravity has a sense of humour and a very specific pallet of tastebuds. 

If that’s not whimsy, it’s at least darkly comedic. 

A fraction more oxygen and we would burn. A fraction less and we would suffocate. Instead – a circus balancing act. 

Call it physics, providence of the world’s most elaborate practical joke. 

Science will say the universe began with a bang – a dramatic, luminous expansion of possibility. Faith will say it began with gratitude. Personally, I think it began with a grin.

Because look at it.

Perhaps science and faith are simply two ways of responding to the absurdity – one with a calculator and the other with a candle and prayer. 

Yet both look at the starlit sky and say, “that is extraordinary.” 

Even atoms are mostly empty space – tiny cathedrals of nothing, airy little ballrooms where electrons waltz around nuclei without ever quite settling down. Which means when I lean into you, technically, we never really touch. The chairs beneath us, the floor beneath them, and the planet beneath that. When I press my palm to yours, our bodies are held apart by an invisible avoidance of intimacy. 

Yet, I could have sworn I felt you. 

Which explains a lot actually, as to why we seek closeness. It explains why moments slip between fingertips and why laughter feels like liftoff in a rocket. 

Alas, I am merely a human. 

If the universe is made of laws then whimsy is simply when those laws lean a little sideways because the particles are intoxicated on a Thursday evening.