Bunnies

Dimitar Sasselov, the Harvard astrophysicist, was saying how 73% of the universe is dark energy, and how another 23% is dark matter, which can't be seen directly but which he thinks could look something like this.

With seven hours of sleep in the last three nights, none at all tonight, and the car to Switzerland coming at 8AM in about an hour, today was the kind of day whose chaotic insanity could only be fueled by Red Bull, pheromones, music, and nerves, along with large amounts of dark energy, though the energy was otherwise very light.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Swiss art critic, famously holds 24-hour sleepless art dialogues at the Serpentine Gallery in London. He says that after one hour the questions are stupid, after four hours the questions begin to get interesting, and after 24 hours the discussion is finally bursting with ideas, and then it is difficult to stop. It felt that way today, too, though it was less about conversation.

But like all fuels, dark energy eventually runs out, so then you have to slide into a black hole and lay low for a while before you get spat out the other side as new life with fresh legs and a clean heart, and you just hope it spits you back out into a good situation, because that is the danger with black holes and with life — you can never really know.