Round One of the holiday feasting is over. Round Two – the changing of one year into another, lurks nearby. “Old 2008” is getting by, just so! New-to-be born 2009 awaits on the horizon. We had an unexpected invitation to a pleasant Yuletide dinner at the friendly home of an astronomer. Since we don’t have a vehicle, we were fetched by his colleague, an astrophysicist no less, who specializes in Black Holes, thank you.
This gave us an opportunity to see all the outdoor holiday decorations with their multitude of designs, imagery and lights, in all colours of the spectrum. Always a magical, fairy-tale like phenomena, even more so on a snowy wintry night, a rarity here in Victoria. Sitting thus in the car, being driven by the astrophysicist, I was looking at these multi-coloured lights and wondered (still do) what is “behind” all this electricity?
You know, we take a lot for granted. We make use of all the frontier gadgets, from cell phone to Jumbo jet, and those “cities of the seas”, called cruise ships. Ever wondered what’s it all about? We flip a switch, push a button, Presto! Abracadabra, the lights and equipment work.
Yes, there are also batteries to provide energy, and of course the more progressive among us have solar panels or windmills, however anything we plug-in, or is plugged-in and needs to function, we switch, push or ‘whisper’ and voila! It works. How come?
“Well, that’s because of electricity, my child.”
“What’s electricity?”
“Well, ahem, ahem, Energy, my child.”
“Does it think and feel, does it know what it’s doing?”
“Ahem, well now, you’ve got me!”
See what I mean? There has to be some kind of intelligence, some consciousness behind it all.
That’s why I call it Intelligent Electricity. In the world of hydro and energy companies, they use the term intelligent electricity to refer to grids and eco-smart systems, but my reference is to the mystery of its consciousness.
Now, all those colours we witnessed, speeding by at an average of 60 km per hour, are they also not a mystery? And magical? Of course. We see the same colour range in the Rainbow, except these Yuletide little lamps and lights are an assortment of that spectrum.
And while our astrophysicist friend drove us back home on that snowy night, wondering and pondering about the mystery of this “Intelligence of Electricity”, my hungry eyes (and mind) harvested all that light and colour on that Christmas night, tapping those images and sights, sending it all to my brain, to understand . . . Being in the presence of an astrophysicist, someone who explores far-away galaxies, I return to my age-old question, “Where does all that Space come from, where the great ballroom dance of the Universe takes place?” ‘Signing off for now, Henri