TRANSIT VISA: God's Glue

God's Glue
Savannah, GA, January, 2012

'Nothing' is approaching us faster than we can imagine - that's what they say. It's got something to do with the rate of the universe's expansion. 'Nothing' is supposed is supposed to be a place. The place where all things are potential. Then you add Gravity to Nothing and all manner of things come into happening, especially Time.
Like this: I'm sitting in a parking lot on Abercorn Extension. I have a 100 question questionnaire to take in suite 208, to decide whether I am a viable candidate to be a PCA, personal care assistant for the home bound or elderly at Coastal Home Care. I imagine scenarios in which I cook a light lunch and read Proust out loud. I run errands in the family car and take careful walks with the patient at dusk. But I am afraid the tasks will be much less pleasant, involving bed pans and toenails. Yuck.
Back to Nothingness, which has always seemed like the easy way out for people who like to deal in opposites - since there is Something, there must also be Nothing. Even though I bristle at the oversimplification I try to contact a place as close to Nothing as I can humanly imagine. Each day I devote my 10-15 minutes in sitting silence, plugging in to a neutral place, without judgement, without consequence. No agendas!
From my sun bench in the circular park I can just see the pink stucco house that we live in on the corner, and the stop sign where we must stop and look both ways before we cross. There was a scene there last night - terrible. Serra clasped her arms around Nora's waist and wouldn't let go. I removed Serra twice, gingerly, from the older girl's waist. The older girl finally ran out of sight. 4.5 year old, Serra, wailed uncontrollably.
Just last night we watched the video of her parent's wedding. Everyone was there in younger, better versions. But where was Serra? You weren't born yet, we told her. Was I in another room? No. Was I in your tummy? No. Then the inevitable question - then - WHERE WAS I? Esma and I couldn't imagine how to tell her that she was 'Nowhere.'
This scientist on the radio talks rapidly, excitedly. I like him. He keeps saying: These things are worth celebrating. These things are worth celebrating! That we are fortunate enough to be here at exactly 13.7 billion years after the BIG BANG, (another concept I am quite resistant to), just in time, precisely in a spot from which we can still measure the evidence of it. And he talks of the Anthropic Idea - if all of the accidents of the laws of the universe hadn't lined up in just this arbitrary way, we wouldn't be here to ask these questions.
Time was on my side today, and the sun was co-operating. My half an hour in the car was expansive. I had the time to spare before I needed to go and answer my 100 questions. 2:45 by the NPR clock.