Collected Excerpts

Holy Hill, August 2022.

Note: The following piece contains excerpts from past essays, research papers, and entries of the De Omnibus encyclopedia. Each work will be referenced after the quote (please note that some are not part of a broader work, and will not have referencing). Enjoy!

“Like a dichotomous Queen, she too was an unfortunate mix of two opposite charges; for one, she was the embodiment of empathy, the life of the most lovely and multitudinous occasion, the most cherishable of fancies; for another, she was a ruthless dragon, the quiet Maleficent terrorizing my blood-red skies, the silent woman in the stage of excitement, the embodiment of hatred and fear. To death she impelled me, and in her grasp I nearly fell; to love she impelled me, and near her arms I almost embraced.”

Meditations, November 2021.

“[Our descendants] will take one last look at that small pearl of blue in the sunlit sky, watching the hearth of our creation, the journeys, the oceans of revolution, the pain and sacrifice we endured as we sought a better world, fade away into the gradually dimmer, pale blue light.”

Astronomy, Art and Collectivism, December 2022.

“I am loosened from my shackles, and I am free! I once languished on this very step, burning in an invisible valley of despair, unable to move, unable to breathe, the sweet fruit of freedom tasteless in my mouth. I now stand, jump, simmering with euphoria, moving freely throughout the road, the forest, and the plain, the spirits of freedom and life proliferating in my heart.”

The Importance of Patience, June 2022.

“An apt for astronomy is an endowment that all of us hold in common. As enslaved people traveling on the Underground Railroad worked their way North in the night, they looked up at Polaris, the “North Star to Freedom,” longing for freedom, pursuing freedom, following the night sky to freedom.”

Why Do We Love Astronomy?, February 2022.

“Although it is obvious that gravity does exist, we still do not know how it works. Classical mechanics cannot describe gravity on greater–or faster–scales, and particle physics also has yet to correctly describe gravity conceptually. The Standard Model attempts to explain the fundamental forces through particles, but the graviton–the hypothetical facilitator of the gravitational force–is much more hypothetical than other gauge bosons, and is even inconsistent with observational evidence.”

“The Standard Model of Particle Physics,” Entry Nineteen, De Omnibus, January 2021.

“As we all rushed to laud Rushdie and consider ourselves free speech warriors like him, some of us found in our reactions a ruthless hypocrisy – when a country halfway across the world tries to silence a man critical of their institutions, we are quick to defend that man’s human right to free speech; yet, when we do the same, we disguise our repression as cutting out on dangerous rhetoric, like threats of war or insurrection, or we justify that our efforts are in the name of social justice, even if repressing such speech does not influence either.”

Rushdie, August 2022.

“If they truly have hatred in their hearts, they will have no advance. Love neutralizes and will always neutralize every single person who wishes to call us their enemy. Nations and people will always build their arms, but rarely do they open them; we, the strugglers for freedom and equality, must be the ones to open our arms.”

A Message to Protestors For This Thursday, July 2022.

“The ends and the means are inextricably connected; the ends cannot be achieved without positive execution of the means, and the means cannot occur without solid understanding of the ends. To reach the ends, we need solid means: peaceful protest; hope and devotion; extensive voter registration and “Get Out the Vote” campaigns; the absence of bitterness, violence, and hatred; and, above all, love and understanding of one another – both our friends and those who wish to call us their enemy. A campaign on violence will never appeal to the majority of voters, certainly, and it will only give those who would call us their enemy the firepower to crush our movement, destroy our morale and ruin the good cause of our work.”

Rallying for Change After the Fall of Roe, June 2022

“We must embrace love, not hate, and understanding, not intolerance. We must fight peacefully against the formidable terror of America's racism, and we must fight to bring truth to the message that all men are created equal. We must love our enemies, and urge our silent friends.”

A Proclamation on Juneteenth, June 2021.

“[The image] demonstrates the frivolity of war, division and classification. It proves that dividing ourselves into countries, states, groups of people, and ideologies only makes ourselves more negligible in the universe than we already are. No other image objectively excoriates our useless divisions and restrictions of right, unity and peace, than this view of a long-distant supercluster, lensing a long-dead galaxy which is still quadrillions of times larger than our entire planet. “

One Image, July 2022.

I end you all off with something more important than myself. I seek nothing more than to spread this heart-wrenching quote, for circumstance leaves me unable to pursue anything further. The tides of Lake Michigan were not strong enough to bring me closer to her. Please note that some details of the original essay have been removed.  Thank you all, as always, for reading through this collection.

“I love you, even though you do not know. I am Shakespeare to the Dark Lady, Venus to Adonis, Romeo to Juliet. I see in the stars your face, your eyes, your organization, your passion for people and morality and good food, everything. I hear in the waves the beating of your heart as we hugged goodbye, your beautiful voice, the content of your voice, everything. I remember everything, feel everything, as vivid and obvious and painful as a Sunburn. I wish you were here. I wish you could have joined me. I wish to join you near where you are now. Only a few months. My heart burns like a Sunburn to see you again.”*

Sunburn, September 2022.

* A "few months" was in reference to an ambition that ultimately never panned out. As I said, circumstance leaves me unable to pursue anything further.