Lectures in America

When Tray, age 4, looked up at the rainclouds above Salt Lake City, and asked, "what's in those clouds," I answered, "dark matter."

When he asked, "what's dark matter," I said that no one really knows what dark matter is. At best, dark matter's a hypothesis, though those who know think dark matter, along with dark energy, constitutes 95% of the total content in the universe.

I didn't know how much of the universe was constituted by dark matter and dark energy when Tray asked his question. I had to get that answer later, on the drive from Salt Lake City to San Francisco.

I did know about dark matter however, that dark matter explains almost everything.

Once home in San Francisco, I opened Gertrude Stein's Lectures in America, which I keep bedside in case of emergency. "It is true that generations are not of necessity existing that is to say if the actual movement within the thing is alive enough. A motor goes inside of an automobile and the car goes. In short this generation has conceived an intensity of movement so great that it has not to be seen against something else to be known, and therefore this generation does not connect itself with anything, that is what makes this generation what it is and that is why it is American."

Sometimes just saying anything is enough, whatever is said is sufficient. Sometimes the answer is not in the answer, the answer's in the question, where it should be. That's what makes this country great, and should give all of us such hope for the future and for the generations after the future.