Black Holes, Language, and RAB

Salvete, readers! (Salvete is Latin for "hello" - it's "salve" if you're speaking to only one person, but I do sincerely hope that more than one person is reading this. Most likely, my audience consists of the five other curly fries and perhaps one or two pedophiles.)

Today is May 1, quite commonly known as May Day in my homeland of Great Britain (where the Great Brits live), which is very exciting because it means that we have hit the metaphorical "home stretch" of the school year! More importantly, however, today is Saturday, which means you are about to have the most imponderable pleasure of reading the ramblings of Virgil*.
This week, I learned that mini M&Ms do, indeed, taste infinitely better than regular-sized M&Ms. I learned several other things, but those things are school-related and not nearly as useful.

I am not going to introduce myself, because I already did so in the first post (scroll down) and I have been talked about in other previous posts that you should go and read if you haven't already. Do it. Read them. Now. I'll wait.

*Anyone mildly interested in classics (if you're not - WHY?) probably knows that Virgil is, in fact, a shortened and anglicized version of the name Publius Vergilius Maro, author of many famous works, the most notable of which being the Aeneid. (Team Dido!)

Okay, now onto the actual content of Virgil's Saturday ramblings. I am going to channel my inner John Green and say that this blog post is going to come to you in THREE PARTS!! Part 1) Black holes, Part 2) Language, and Part 3) RAB.

Part 1: Black Holes

So yesterday I was sitting in my room, staring at the wall (which was covered in cutouts from National Geographic magazines - yeah, I'm a nerd) and pondering symbolism. In case anybody was wondering, that's what us "seriously legit writers" do when we're bored. I began thinking about good metaphors for this hallucination we call "life" and I came up with this one that is so perfect that it will actually blow your mind. You may have guessed from the title, but the metaphor is a black hole. Okay, now I actually have to explain it.

In a black hole, everything within the black hole's grasp is constantly falling toward a single point called a "singularity," where the radius of the hole equals zero. This "singularity" symbolizes death. (Yes, I'm being morbid. If discussion of death bothers you, please move on to Part 2.) Some objects take longer than others to reach the singularity, but it is an inevitable and constant journey. Scientists debate where matter goes once it reaches the singularity, or whether it ever actually reaches this point at all. You see, theoretically, time stretches out in a black hole - it exists in four dimensions. Some people believe that matter enters a worm hole and comes out somewhere else in the universe - or perhaps in another universe altogether - from somehing called a white hole. However, this theory has never been proved. Because of the law of conservation of matter, it is supposedly physically impossible for the matter that gets sucked into a black hole to just disappear at the other end. It has to go somewhere. In the same way, once one finishes his journey through life and reaches death (the "singularity"), nobody knows exactly where the soul goes. Does it disappear? It's so hard for the human race to imagine ourselves simply disappearing when we die that our world religions have invented several different answers to the question of where the metaphorical matter and light goes once they reach the metaphorical singularity. Some religions have adopted the "white hole" theory - that our souls somehow travel down a worm hole and end up in a parallel universe: the afterlife. Other religions believe that one's soul is reincarnated after he dies - akin to the theory that black holes open up light years away from their origin. Just as it is impossible to prove where matter goes at the end of a black hole, it is also impossible to prove whether or not there is an afterlife, where it is, and what it is like.

Enough of Virgil's morbidness. (Morbidity?) Let's enjoy our journey to the "singularity," since there is no way we can find out what our final destination may be.

Part 2: Language

I was thinking about this earlier, and I found it really interesting (then again, I find a lot of things interesting that other people don't, such as metaphors for life, see Part 1) so I figured that I'd blog about it, because I guess that's what people who have blogs do (?) I'm not really sure; I've never had a blog before, not even a collab one.

I think a lot of people take language for granted. People don't realize how amazing it is that right now, as you're reading this, mechanisms on the front of your face are taking these random patterns of red visible light waves and sending a signal to your brain, where by some crazy interaction of nerves that I don't understand and I doubt many people do, these random patterns of light waves are somehow converted into something that can be understood, convey emotion, and have meaning. It's a beautiful thing. It's also a beautiful thing that we have mechanisms in our throats that can cause vibrations in the air, and that we also have mechanisms on the sides of our heads that can take those vibrations from the air and send a signal to our brains where those vibrations can be turned into something that can be understood, convey emotions, have meaning. Tiny back-and-forth movements of particles. Isn't it wonderful? Language, both written and spoken, is such a beautiful feat of nature and it's one of the many reasons why I can't understand how we ("we" referring to the world) could have happened without the intervention of something greater, something divine. I digress. House told me not to talk about religion in posts. Well, I guess it's a little late for that.

Doesn't it just amaze you, though? How tiny light waves and sound waves can somehow have a deeper meaning? Novels are really just molecules; inspirational speeches are just vibrations in the air; the words you are reading right now are just tiny lights on a computer screen. Yet at the same time, they are all so much more. Things like this make me really excited in an extremely nerdy, Virgil-esque sort of way. So are you going to still take language for granted now? I have conveyed a message through random waves of light. Doesn't that seem miraculous to you?

Or there's the possibility I'm just crazy. However, I believe that it is the responsibility of the writer to point out the beauty in what may seem commonplace, or else it may go unnoticed, and that would be a terrible shame. (Now there's a great quote! I swear I came up with it myself!)

Part 3: RAB

HARRY POTTER SPOILER ALERT!!

I was thinking about character names for my novel earlier. (So far, I've been referring to the main characters as "X" and "Y," and I think now they're starting to have identity issues.) Then I started thinking about character names from books that I like, which of course brought my chain of thought to Harry Potter. I started thinking about the Black family (the most noble and ancient house of Black - toujours pur!) and how almost all of their names are stars or constellations in the night sky. There's Sirius, Bellatrix, Andromeda, Draco, Scorpius... and then I though about Regulus Arcturus Black, and what his name might mean. I know that "Regulus" means "little king" in Latin (because I'm cool and I take Latin) but I wasn't sure what Arcturus meant, so I looked it up and found out that it comes from the ancient Greek word for "guardian of the bear." This would make sense, I thought to myself. Arcturus is a star located near Ursa Major, or the "Great Bear" (also Latin) so it's logical that it would be "guardian of the bear." Also, Regulus ends up "guarding" the trio and the rest of the wizarding world by his heroic efforts. But what about the "little king"? After Sirius was disowned, I though to myself, Regulus would have been the heir to the Black family fortune. But then I had an epiphany. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation "Leo Major" - the Big Lion. Regulus. Lion. The lion is the symbol of Gryffindor. It all suddenly made sense! Regulus, although he was Sorted into Slytherin, was actually a true Gryffindor at heart, as demonstrated through his bravery in stealing the locket horcrux and writing a letter to You-Know-Who, signing it with his initials RAB! So naturally, I felt quite smart after this epiphany, and decided that I absolutely must write about it in this Saturday's post. And now I have shared my revelation with all of you. Huzzah!

Tomorrow is Sunday, which not only means that I get to go to church and youth group (we're going bowling! How Christlike!) but it also means that we may or may not be writing a collab post! Eugepae!

Peace, Love, & Otters,
Virgil

Post Script: It has come to my attention that this post is exceptionally longer than the ones which have preceded it. Am I in trouble?