Reality

We had a high temperature of 299 degrees Kelvin today. Midday we had a brightness of about 15 lux. Atmospheric pressure at approximately 300 meters above sea level, on a day between high and low pressure systems, was about 98,000 Pa.

Those three sentences are my attempts to share with you an experience of this place.

Another way of saying that it was a cloudy day, but also pleasantly warm. For me, it was shorts and t-shirt weather. The thermometer on the garage said 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

These are all descriptions of reality, which is to say, science, as science is our attempt to document reality in a way that another person standing in the same place at the same time with the same measurement tools could get the same result.

Science always begins with our best effort to document reality as thoroughly and accurately as possible.

Hypothesis: The forecast for tomorrow is 300 degrees.

The work of science is first to document what is unarguably real. Hypothesis is a prediction as to where reality is moving.

Multiple thermometers can stand in the same place at the same time and get the same experience of reality.

No two humans can.

Joanne, the dispatcher for Best Septic™

texted me to say the pump truck

was scheduled for late morning tomorrow.

I went to clear the turf grown

over the top of the tank

in the years since the last clean out.

When I finished I looked up

the light was so bright and clear

everything was blue and green

with a hint of gold emerging

from the maples.

Standing still.

Below me, 1000 gallons of sewage.

Above me, the strange physics of sunlight

coruscating through the atmosphere

creating the illusion of a blue dome.

Here I am

standing still.

in some unimaginable place

fully alive.

Between shit and magic.