The Axis: Letter Two
Dear Susannah
I felt transfixed by the column from the very first moment of its appearance, as if it were a part of my core, a fundamental component of my essential self. If the universe revolved around this axis then so did I. And I was not alone. It was something that had just driven its way into the consciousness of every living human being, whether they knew it yet or not. I had no time in which to prepare myself for this visual assault. Had it not been for the wonders I’d already witnessed in my travels, I might have been overwhelmed by the sight. As it was, the influx of visual sensation made me cling to the sight, a rock in the maelstrom that threatened to overpower my senses.
The shock, visceral and visual, came in waves, each inspiring discoveries of their own. The first and perhaps the most profound: how beautiful it was, its sides the colour of midnight skies, or marble in moonlight. Or an ocean filled with sunlight, never the same thing from one moment to the next, the only commonality the awe it inspired. The second, that it seemed to contain a universe all of its own. From the outset I was convinced I could see stars in its midst. And not just individual suns but entire constellations, as if here were the patterns which back on Earth the sky often hid from view. Gazing deeper, the constellations themselves seemed to coalesce to form entire galaxies — spirals and ellipsoids — all possessing their own motion, fragments of the angular momentum that drove the pivot. Deeper still, beyond the reach of my eyes, if not my intuition, a core, perhaps more ancient than the universe itself, as distant and unobtainable as the edge of the cosmos.
The column’s dimensions far exceeded the width of the Circle, its girth obliterating all trace of the marbled circumference. I had no doubt that the column contained all manner of celestial phenomena including black holes. Contained seemed to be the operative word. The object’s outer boundaries held its energies in check, an event horizon of sorts across which nothing could pass, the seemingly impenetrable barrier forestalling energies that might otherwise have spilled over into the universe I inhabited. At first, we were too close to perceive that this wall was curved. That perspective only came with distance, the additional eighty or so metres (taken at a stumbling run) that we added to the intervening gap as soon as we’d gathered our senses. We were silent for a long time, hushed into a quiet unbroken even by expressions of awe. A silence inspired by the sheer scale of the spectacle. Words would have been as inappropriate as laughter at a funeral.
Tanya’s eyes were raised to the power looming above her, following the curved planes of its circumference as if hypnotised by this strange and immense geometry, a mesmerising effect that I struggled to ignore, choosing instead to peer directly into the column’s interior. As I studied the phenomenon, my mind was divided by the rational urge to stand my ground and learn all I could, and the barely controllable desire to turn on my heels and put as much distance as possible between myself and the source of those feelings. It was the fight or flight syndrome. In choosing to stand my ground the fight became a struggle to comprehend what I was seeing.
I glanced at my companion, acutely aware of how vulnerable and insignificant we both were compared to the terms of scale imposed by the pivot. All the years of our respective lives, together with those of our ancestors, were as nothing when set against the span of the axis. All those generations had come and gone in less time than it took those roiling skies to go from dawn to dusk, to pass a single beat of its hidden heart. For every day that went by in this other universe, a hundred thousand would pass in the world of human affairs. The pivot’s life and that of the universe itself were somehow one and the same, concurrent and indivisible. Against such perpetuity the rise and fall of even the most advanced civilisations was little more than a blink of the cosmic eye. How much less significant the span of a single human life? The utter inconsequence of such a measure was enough to crush even the sturdiest heart.
Such considerations, I quickly decided, were better left alone.