The Fewer & Far Between

  by yr reporter yet roving in the land of the living  sh0n gRub  

       All my old dead friends of a long lost lifetime appear to have since slipped into a sort of gray subtext that I can’t quite place into words, but it seems as if they have been subsumed into the sparser population of fewer friends that I have left—these newer friends who didn’t even know my older friends that died. It’s almost as if my old pals' ghosts haunt this side by adhering, on a strange molecular level, to wherever it is my spirit touches.

   For example, my best friend Greg. I think of him after he passed on in 2018—soon to be nine years—and I feel that his spirit lingers here in my mind. It’s a common theme when we lose those close to us, friends and family, behind. But I feel there’s a new way of haunting, augmented by the digital world due to our interactions with people online. There are many on the World Wide Web that I have known for decades, including some I’ve never met in person, and I know they are real, even if our relationship occurs in an uncanny way. I feel somehow that those I’ve known who died have been subsumed into the fewer of us who’ve been left behind, here on this other side. 

   It leads me to wonder, for example, if my fondly remembered best friend hasn’t accreted somehow into some of my current friends—and what the difference is between that notion and my superimposing him onto others, almost as a self-fulfilling wish-prophecy—or if it’s just my strong desire that my dearest buddy hadn’t died and was still here to listen to me; for us to share our strange ideas the way we used to, always on the same wavelength, after having left me with the need to have someone else fill that role.

   It makes me wonder. To what extent exactly do those who have passed remain here with us? In what ways do the dead continue to linger here among us, the living?

   I can’t help but feel they don’t just haunt decrepit, empty buildings and abandoned homes the way all the familiar ghost stories showed us, so much as they fill our bodies—our blood vessels and plasma, the neurons in our brains—possessing our spirit, so to speak. Engendering a sort of displacement with the dead.  

at the heart of :: the matriarchal :: matrix

   sh0n gRub   reporting  from his orbit about the  heart of the galaxy 

Take a quick glance  at   this    GREEN MAN   at the center of our Milky Way galaxy for a sec.  It’s the 2022 MeerKAT radio mosaic of the Milky Way’s center, processed by astronomer Ian Heywood and released by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). Only I colorized it green, see.  And I tilted it vertically.  Which really remains meaningless, meaning meaningful, if you see what I mean.  

     I mean, there's no direction in space, so I just wanted to emphasize the pregnant hierophant with a head like Alf holding it's arms out crossed and what appears to be a highlit blue egg in its uterus.   There's a lotta  wicker-wack lashing whipstrands of turbulent activity seemingly captured in this image.  Those are magnetized radio filaments, supernova remnants, stellar nurseries and portions of enormous radio bubbles extending above and below the galactic plane.  Pretty gnarly, huh?  Here's the image as I found it online: 

Image: I. Heywood/SARAO

   See now our super dimensional view of this region at the heart of our galaxy can be seen as the MeerKAT intended:  Red indicates strong radio emission; weaker emissions appear in grayscale.  The finished mosaic combines 20 observations, approximately 200 hours of telescope time and 70 terabytes of raw data.   Of course our Earth and Sun occupy the observational viewpoint behind this image.  That yellow eyelet indicates the Sagittarius A region containing Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. 

     If you want to interpret that small orange yellow luminous patch as an eye, it would be staring right back at us here on Earth.   If you're wondering how much space this area takes, it's far less than 1% of the Milky Way—probably on the order of a few thousandths of one percent by projected area. The entire MeerKAT image covers only the central region of the galaxy—roughly 1,000–1,400 light-years in extent—while the Milky Way’s stellar disk is approximately 100,000 light-years across.   The whole rectangular field on display here  represents only around 0.01–0.03% of the galaxy’s projected disk area.

   The visualization is mapping radio brightness, not showing everything that exists there.  If you're wondering what size in relation to the yellow "eyelet fetus" kernel in the center the black hole within may be, it's far less than a single pixel within it, extremely miniscule by contrast as visualized on this scale.    Plasma and electromagnetic fields are indispensable to the observable universe. They govern stellar atmospheres, solar winds, jets, accretion disks, radiation, charged-particle acceleration and many features in this very MeerKAT image. Galactic magnetic fields extend across enormous distances, and the Sun’s heliosphere interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium.

   At the heart of the Milky Way, matter falls inward while radiation, magnetism and charged particles surge outward, contributing to a galactic circulation whose complete reach and significance remain imperfectly understood.  I've been researching this because this image has fascinated me more than anything since the Hubble revealed the Carina Nebula Panorama (which I wrote about in my first foray of experimental gravitational lensing poetry, on the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction).  I wrote a short flash fiction sequel to that one, based on an expanded and higher resolution image of the Carina Nebula, which never ended up getting published on the Freezine, something I've been meaning to rectify ever since. 

    Now that this MeerKAT Man, or WoMan as the case may be, has been revealed, this Matriarchal Matrix incubating a motha- freakin'  BLACK HOLE at the center of our universe - for all we know, the True Womb of our Creation  - a Paradoxical Phenomenon which Births Itself - )?(as in the ancient Hebrew wisdom that signifies God being created along with the universe) after having emerged from the utter nonbeing of the void which we cannot possibly wrap our minds around or understand -  [except as  AIN SVP AVR {Ain Soph Aur =  the negatively existent One; the limitless Expansion; the illimitable Light} - of which only a dim conception may be formed] - now that we can SEE some of it - as radio emissions - we can close our eyes and let our minds connect the dots.  What do you think it all means? 

  Gaze deep into the heart of our galaxy:

Less than a pinprick of a pixel in the center of 

this yellow mass lies a super massive black hole 

Sagittarius A contains Sagittarius A* (and Sagittarius A* 

identifies the black hole w/its immediate radiating surrounds)

s|x sHades

by sh0n gRub 

 for  John Shirley 

of darkening black gathering intensity as it forms the cloud polluting the eye that scans over the horizon to see what comes next seven blades of circumstance arranged in a flowering scale dripping diamond mercury drops in a stitch work buffeting a gale driven between gulfs sparked in the albumen of cold dark outer space while eight shadows stagger across this permutation still taking place and all nine entwined molecular chains separate into three trinities combined while we emerge from the tenth portal to find one packed homestead open to infinity dividing in twain to face each other off in a battle of tempestuous love giving birth to the third elemental which time will double into six other shades of blackened darkness gathering