the theory of everything, watched four times in two days

Yuki and I passed by Midd two weekends ago,
accidentally turned back the clock
Net sorrow, but that particular kind of sunset...

I lost my voice after a week of "teaching" and sounded like Marge Simpson so I decided it would be sufficient to show The Theory of Everything as a time-killing tactic these past two days of class (sorry sorry students and sorry to parents who pay so much—it's relevant to the course I promise—or at least establishes intrigue). I first saw this film <4 years ago over Christmas break and remember bawling with Cherry in the cushy Pruneyard Shopping Center theater. Melodramatic bits (Stephen and Jane nuzzling) notwithstanding, the students did detect that while physics does a fair job of predicting behavior of phenomena both extraordinarily large and also sub-atomic in size, the "human-sized happenings—cream going into a coffee cup, [the miraculous marriage of Stephen and Jane]—remain a mystery" (à la Tom Stoppard's Arcadia!).

Turn back the clock! That's why I cried so much after this film—if only I could occasionally turn back the clock! It's pointless and poetic, this notion of slipping through different values of t, in the way that Jane—when asked why she studies "medieval poetry of the Iberian peninsula"—answers Stephen that she likes to time travel, "just like [him]." Is that where literature and physics intersect, then? Or if not all types of physics, just cosmology? GR? In an effort to turn back the clock?

Stephen and Jane—envoys of "Science!" and "Arts!"—converse so seamlessly that Jane's quoting Genesis to her atheistic companion as they gaze upon constellations doesn't sound the least bit corny. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Maybe it sounded particularly fitting because of her very englishy accent. But even StephenEddie RedmayneHawking took her seriously in that moment, and so did my class.

(Aw! A dorm-daughter of mine just brought me a throat lozenge! It's a Friday night so some of the girls are coming back from the white-out dance with boys and I am enforcing the shoe-in-the-door rule and blasting music to block out any nuzzling noises.)

I leave you with the quotes from Arcadia, Merriam-Webster, and this film that linger after this first week of teaching. Percolating.

phys·ics 
•ˈfiziks/
•noun
the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. 

“Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about – clouds – daffodils – waterfalls – and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in – these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.”  —Tom Stoppard's Arcadia   

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." —Einstein

"Not only does God play dice, but...  he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." —Hawking

"I have loved you. I did my best." —Jane Hawking, in the movie

new vocab

These words populate my speech now:

Plattsburgh, PGs, advisee, Grape Nut custard, Subaru Outback, Tilton, Camp Mowglis ("mao-glee"), canoe!, seltzer, pour, ahh bad decision, Dollar General, Husky Nation, bleeding green, hemlock, white pines have five needles, birch!, blackbear, Nelly, Ludacris, Pilalas ("puh laww luhs"), HIIT, hell-ooo mister fluffy, how old's your baby?, the lake, the lake house, what lake is that, wicked [XYZ], Newton, 93 North, Worcester ("wuhster"), Concord Coach, yes I'll have a dumpling, "I'm Gl--Miss Breck!"

Who knew Grape Nuts could be made into a custard, utterly annihilating their teeth-annihilating ways?! Also, that NH has +-twice the population of and different soil than VT (resulting in ver-monty's fluffier greenery)?

Also, that no words are better suited to winning both hearts and cooperation than:

- What can I bake for you?

- Let's go to Dunks!

NEPSAC experience in a nutshell. Somehow bypassed the whole shebang at Midd.

Home's a good place, and so is here :)