Drifting in the Space of Ramblings

Ramblings About Infinite

In Memory of Alan Poindexter

What is it to have no end?

They say we cannot fully grasp the true meaning of the word "infinite." Mathematics is the only language where the infinite is conceivable in a way that our limited thought process can comprehend. Love also, but is love a form of language?

A mother's love for her children, barring exceptions, is infinite. The mother who loves her child will still love them when all the stars have burned out and there is nothing left wandering the universe, only dust or not even that.

Love is so unattainable.

Untouchable.

Incomprehensible.

Infinite.

As I contemplate the universe and wonder if it is truly infinite or not, I have the desire to love something, something without end, that lasts even after my death. That endures even if there is no life after death. That my love roams the cosmos as my body roams now and that it remains so forever.

If the universe has an end, my love would find it, it would shatter against a column of rocks marking the end of the infinite, and even after millennia of wandering, it would make its way back from where it came and start all over again. Again and again, and this would be infinite even if the universe has an end.

I don't even know what I'm thinking anymore. It makes no sense at all.

So close to death, I wonder if I want to have a soul that lasts forever, because "forever" is something so long and heavy that it might scare me more than ceasing to exist. Of course, I want there to be something after, but I don't know if it needs to be "forever." The infinite is as vast and dark as the universe, which is perhaps why we associate the two in our daily lives. Mathematics is cold and complicated, much like the infinite.

Love is so rarely associated with the infinite, yet it is the closest thing to it. True love. Infinite, vast, empty, and causing us suffering.

I look at my oxygen regulator and see that it has broken due to the cold; I don't even know how much longer I have to breathe. I wish for a blanket; I can see the smoke coming out of my mouth and fogging up the helmet's glass. I wish I could draw something with my finger on the fogged glass like I used to when I was a child.

I think about the time that has passed between me being here, dying, wandering through space, and the last time I drew with my finger on fogged glass when I was a child.

It's been so long.

So long it seems infinite.