The sign of infinity

It happened when I was in elementary school. One day we were taught about the universe and our solar system. I felt dizzy because I just couldn’t comprehend the sheer scale of it all – everything around us seemed to be insanely out of proportion. So I did what I used to do when something was beyond my grasp – right after getting home I fired a question after question at my poor older sister. She explained to me about the planets, the stars and the constellations, but my head didn’t clear up. To the contrary, instead of getting a clear picture I felt like as though my head would explode. My dizziness escalated and there was a humming “diuuun” sound in my head – the one you get when you knock on an iron pot (which is kind of ironic as I used to think that sound meant the emptiness of stupidity, as in the saying “a head as empty as an overturned pot”). So, on that day I learned that having an empty, stupid head and having a stupid head full of information is kind of the same.

Me: So, what’s at the very, very, very end?
Sister: There is no “very, very, very end!”
Me: Something should be! You said there were stars!
Sister: Yes, there are stars – many stars. One star after another and another and another, and there is no end to it. Got it?
Me: No.
Sister: Let’s start from the beginning.
Me: Ok.
Sister: Our planet, the Earth, is in the Solar system.
Me: No, let’s start from the very beginning.
Sister: And that is?
Me: The Earth.
Sister: I started from the Earth.
Me: No you didn’t.
Sister: Well, then you start.
Me: If we go north we’ll reach Russia. And if we keep going straight, we’ll reach the North Pole. Then there would be Canada, South America and Antarctica. Then some Asian countries, then China and finally, we’ll come back to Mongolia.
Sister: Yes, because the Earth is round.
Me: So, if we reach the Sun and keep going and going and going, shall we return to Earth someday, one day?
Sister: No. Who told you that the universe was round?
Me: Then what's it like?
Sister: Endless.
Me: And what's that like?
Sister: There is a star behind a star, one constellation after another, and even if you go for millions and millions of years, you will never reach the end. Got it?
Me: No.

And then I grew up and stopped wondering about the universe in general and its endlessness in particular. Life presented much more important questions to think about – books, clothes, friends and boys. And work. One day I found myself in Tokyo presenting an electron microscope at some odd industry exhibition. I was showing people magnified images of what they wanted to see – mostly their own hair. Women were terrified – men in their forties and fifties had better hair than thirty-something women and twenty-something girls, simply because they don’t color or dye their hair. Girls just couldn’t believe how awful the condition of their hair surface was. But I digress. There was a little boy, an elementary school pupil:

Boy: This magnifies how much?
Me: Ten thousand times.
Boy: Is this the most powerful one?
Me: No, not at all. In the hierarchy of electron microscopes, this one is kind of a low rank. There are microscopes that magnify one million times, for example. Have you heard the word ‘nano’?
Boy: Where is it?
Me: Sorry, we didn’t bring it here. It’s very huge and heavy, you know.
Boy: If you magnify something one million times, you’ll get to its smallest part?
Me: Hmmm… you see, there is no “smallest part”. You can magnify something one million times, and sure, you’ll get to a very small part of it, but it won’t be the smallest.
Boy: Then I magnify more and more and more and reach a part that cannot be magnified any more. What is it like?
Me: There is no point beyond which you cannot magnify.
Boy: How come?
Me: You see, it’s endless. There is no end to how far you can magnify something. The only question is whether we can make such equipment, and even if we could, whether there is a use for it or not. Got it?
Boy: No.

I remembered my childhood and the conversation with my sister. I remembered trying to imagine the end of things and the endlessness of everything, and how the latter seemed much worse. The absence of an edge or ending seemed strange and scary and fascinating. On that day, however, I didn’t know yet that there is no end not only to the big but to the small as well.

And so, I wondered once again. I also wondered what the boy was wondering about. Was he trying to imagine the very end of things or their endlessness, and finding the latter to be much worse? Will he forget all about it when life presents books, music, friends and girls?

I suppose, it’s good that I blissfully forgot all about the universe and its endlessness. Because poets and Zemfira figured out the sign of infinity ages and ages ago.

　　V. Khlebnikov

　　...in Nature’s shifting glimmer-glass
　　Stars are nets, we their haul,
　　and gods are shadows on a wall…