The God particle

...a dispatch from bewilderness

The universe contains energy fields. Energy fields cling to fundamental particles. They drag on them, making them heavy. Some particles find the field stickier than others.

In an exclusive interview, one particle told me he feels like an elephant wading in tar. Some people call the particle, “The God particle.”

Peter Higgs, the physicist who discovered the speck, said he called it “That goddamn particle,” but the editor changed it to “God.” Since God may help at any time in any place, we turn to landscape now.

Once — in an instant — I landed in a landscape I’d never seen as a person I'd never been. Until that moment, I had been a freelance writer and a part-time freelance ghost. My job was words.

Then — in seconds — words were gone. Some of anything I needed to say would delete as I tried to say it. That is called aphasia.

Also some of anything I tried to do would delete as I tried to do it. That is called amnesia. My recallers quit recalling. This made every object, every moment, its own domain of inquiry. What is this called? What is it for?

One hundred billion neurons -- woven together in a pulsating tapestry of 100 trillion electrical connections -- make us who we are — or were. Mine were broken by the same type of injury former Representative Gabrielle Giffords suffered when she was shot in the head.

paint and collage by judith hannah weiss

Brain injury can mean you can’t walk or talk or read or write or put on a shoe or button a shirt. You also can’t name things you see.

In rehab, a tester showed me pictures.

The shape of a cat.

The shape of a tree.

The shape of the number “3.”

A bird.

A leaf.

A butterfly.

A blue sky.

Another tree.

I needed to find words for them. I couldn’t. Yet.

Yet is an important word.

The playwright Samuel Beckett said writing means being willing to fail not just once but again and again, word by word, thought by thought. Add step by step and day by day and breath by breath and you’ve described brain damage.

Beckett advised, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I do.