I have been reconsidering a personal god, pondering
definitions and personifications of higher powers.
I long ago settled on physics, but once string theory
became passé, fermions and bosons passed me by,
I was left behind with the bronze-age-old-guy—
white beard, mean streak, patriarchal tendencies—
or sometime, in a dream, extra-beautiful goddesses
in linen chitons, worshipped by virgins or oversexed deities
masquerading as birds or gold. But those Greek
divinities ate their children, engaged in a little incest,
then forged long, complicated relationships
on some mountain. That’s a hard no.
Of many appealing choices, I like Amit best, part crocodile,
part lion, part hippo. Egyptian. “Devourer of the Dead”
for obvious reasons—apex predator, no leftovers—
but to define what I believe, I return again to The Standard Model,
although it leaves matter and anti-matter asymmetry, neutrino
oscillations and gravity unexplained.
In the end, I’ve settled on indeterminacy. It was good enough
for Keats. He called it Negative Capability. I don’t have to be sure.
I don’t have to choose. I can put aside the fact that
no one has been able to explain dark matter or dark energy
or the existence of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller—energy vacuums,
inexplicable particles, those stirrers of cosmic chaos who,
like unknowable particle physics, continue to exist.