Antidotes to fear of death from an astrophysicist & a poet, Anne Lamott's wondrous letter to kids about why we read, Newton's quarantine breakthrough

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Hello {NAME}! This is the weekly [Brain Pickings]( newsletter by Maria Popova. If you missed last week's edition — stillness as a form of action; Virginia Woolf on finding beauty in uncertainty; lessons on survival, sanity, and connection from the 1964 earthquake — you can catch up [right here](. And if you find any value and joy in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – I spend innumerable hours and tremendous resources on it each week, as I have been for more than thirteen years, and every little bit of support helps enormously. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [Antidotes to Fear of Death: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Astronomer and Poet Rebecca Elson’s Stunning Cosmic Salve for Our Creaturely Tremblings of Heart]( [aresponsibilitytoawe.jpg?fit=320%2C512]( It is our biological wiring to exist — and then not; it is our psychological wiring to spend our lives running from this elemental fact on the hamster wheel of busyness and the hedonic treadmill of achievement, running from the disquieting knowledge that the atoms [huddling for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self]( will one day disband and return to the [“aloof stars”]( that made them. If we still ourselves for a moment, or are bestilled by circumstance, we glimpse that fact, then hasten to avert our gaze. We go on holding it as an abstraction, an unproven theorem; go on casting spells against the proof in stone and wood and promises; go on building houses and egos, signing thirty-year mortgages, trading the forged mint of forever as contractual currency in marital vows. And then one day, some certitude fissures — in the broken surface of a split lip, a split love, a split in Earth’s quaked crust; in the slow-burning wildfire of a pandemic, smoking its way across the globe until it blazes into a shared inferno; in the cold blade of a terminal diagnosis, sudden and close to the bone. We wake up to unalloyed reality with a scream, a silence, a hollow hallelujah. The astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson (January 2, 1960–May 19, 1999) was twenty-nine when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a blood cancer that typically invades people in their sixties and seventies. Throughout the bodily brutality of the treatment, throughout the haunting uncertainty of life in remission, she met reality on its own terms — reality creaturely and cosmic, terms chance-dealt by impartial laws — and made of that terrifying meeting something uncommonly beautiful. [RebeccaElson1987.jpg?resize=680%2C845] Rebecca Elson, 1987 When she returned her atoms to the universe, not yet forty, Elson bequeathed to this world 56 scientific papers and a slender, stunning book of poetry titled [A Responsibility to Awe]( ([public library]( — verses spare and sublime, drawn from a consciousness pulling the balloon string of the infinite through the loop of its own finitude, life-affirming the way only the most intimate contact with death — which means with nature — can be. Elson’s crowning achievement in verse is the poem “Antidotes to Fear of Death,” beautifully brought to life here as a trailer of sorts for [the 2020 Universe in Verse]( — our annual charitable celebration of the science and splendor of nature through poetry — by astrophysicist, novelist, [Pioneer Works]( Director of Sciences, and devoted [enchantress of poetry]( Janna Levin, with music by cellist, composer, and music revolutionary [Zoë Keating]( from her original soundtrack for [The Edge of All We Know]( — the forthcoming documentary about the Event Horizon Telescope, which in 2019 captured humanity’s [historic]( first glimpse of a black hole. (Janna works on black holes; Elson was among the select scientists tasked with studying the first images returned by the Hubble Space Telescope, that pioneering emblem of our most ambitious tool-making and our longing for intimate contact with the nature of reality.) Janna prefaces her reading with a [Bohrsian]( reflection on the relationship between science and poetry, between the objective and the subjective, concluding with an exquisitely insightful and exquisitely phrased observation of how the tension between these seeming dipoles can dissolve upon closer inspection: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]We are all navigating an external world — but only through the prism of our own minds, our own subjective experience… The majesty of the universe is only ever conjured up in the mind. Please enjoy: [d6cc5eb0-ddb5-496b-a213-55097ef73338.png]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH by Rebecca Elson Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp. Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood: No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form. And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones: To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings. Couple with Regina Spektor reading Elson’s [“Theories of Everything”]( at the 2019 Universe in Verse and Janna reading Maya Angelou’s [cosmic clarion call to humanity]( at the 2018 Universe in Verse, then join us for [the livestream of the 2020 show]( for more beauty and consolation by calibration of perspective, featuring Neil Gaiman premiering another original poem, Patti Smith bringing Emily Dickinson to life, astronaut Leland Melvin reading Neruda’s love letter to Earth’s forests, and thirty other magnificent constellations of atoms celebrating the majesty of the universe and the irreplicable splendor of our Pale Blue Dot. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and solace in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. (If you've had a change of heart or circumstance and wish to rescind your support, you can do so [at this link]( monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 [Anne Lamott’s Wondrous Letter to Children About Books as Antidotes to Isolation, Portals to Perspective, and Crucibles of Self-Discovery]( [avelocityofbeing_cover-1.jpg?fit=320%2C427]( Books [awaken us into living from the slumber of near-life](. Books are [lifelines of survival in inhumane times]( [building blocks of conscientious citizenship]( [reliquaries of the human spirit](. What we read shapes not only what we become, but how we become. That is what the wise and wonderful Anne Lamott explores in her lovely contribution to [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader]( ([public library]( — a labor of love eight years in the making, collecting [121 original illustrated letters to children]( about why we read and how books transform us from some of the most inspiring humans in our world: artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and adventurers whose character has been shaped by a life of reading. [AndreaDezso_AVelocityOfBeing_AnneLamott.jpg?resize=680%2C880] Art by Andrea Dezsö for Anne Lamott’s letter from [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader](. Lamott writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Hi You, I really want you to hear what I am going to say, because I think it is the truth. Okay? I’ll make it fast. If you love to read, or learn to love reading, you will have an amazing life. Period. Life will always have hardships, pressure, and incredibly annoying people, but books will make it all worthwhile. In books, you will find your North Star, and you will find you, which is why you are here. Books are paper ships, to all the worlds, to ancient Egypt, outer space, eternity, into the childhood of your favorite musician, and — the most precious stunning journey of all — into your own heart, your own family, your own history and future and body. Out of these flat almost two-dimensional boxes of paper will spring mountains, lions, concerts, galaxies, heroes. You will meet people who have been all but destroyed, who have risen up and will bring you with them. Books and stories are medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits. And in reading, you will laugh harder than you ever imagined laughing, and this will be magic, heaven, and salvation. I promise. Okay? Deal? Love you, Anne Lamott Complement with other wondrous letters from [A Velocity of Being]( by [Rebecca Solnit]( [Jane Goodall]( [Alain de Botton]( [Debbie Millman]( [Jacqueline Woodson]( [Ursula K. Le Guin]( [Alexander Chee]( [Kevin Kelly]( and 100-year-old Holocaust survivor [Helen Fagin]( then revisit Lamott on [the relationship between brokenness and joy]( [finding meaning in a mad world]( [how perfectionism kills creativity]( and her magnificent [manifesto for calibrating existential priorities](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [Standing on the Shoulders of Solitude: Newton, the Plague, and How Quarantine Fomented the Greatest Leap in Science]( [isaacnewton_jamesgleick.jpg?fit=320%2C448]( In the 1650s, the penumbra of plague slowly began eclipsing Europe. Italy fell first, soon Spain, then Germany, then Holland. From across the slender cell wall of the Channel, England watched and trembled, then cautiously relaxed — for about a decade, some divine will seemed to be shielding the country. But the world was already worshipping at the altar of commerce and the forces of globalization had already been set into motion — with England’s economy relying heavily on trade, its ports bustled with ships carrying silk and tea and sugar from all discovered frontiers of the globe. Rats boarded the ships, fleas boarded the rats, bacteria — an almost-kingdom of unicellular organisms yet to be coronated, for the cell itself was yet to be discovered — boarded the fleas, which took to human flesh as soon as they debarked. [Blake_flea.jpg?resize=680%2C899] The Ghost of a Flea by William Blake (Tate Britain) And so, on Christmas Day 1664, a single plague death was reported in London. Another came in February, then another. “Great fears of sickness here in the City,” the legendary diarist Samuel Pepys was writing by April. “God preserve us all.” God was no match for the absence of a basic scientific understanding of biology and epidemiology. The deaths were swift, gruesome, and, soon, so voluminous that services ceased being held. Over the course of the summer, the death toll swelled tenfold, from hundreds to thousands per week. The infected were ordered not to leave their homes. Many were boarded in and left to die in isolation, an enormous cross painted on the outside of each plagued house. Plays, spectator blood sports, and other crowd gatherings were banned. Street vendors were banned from selling their wares, newsboys ceased crying and retreated indoors. An awful, alien silence came to blanket this capital of din. The universities closed. When Cambridge sent its students home, a young man obsessed with mathematics, motion, and light, whose illiterate father had died three months before his birth, who worshipped a “God of order and not of confusion,” and who had begun his university studies by performing servants’ work for wealthier students in exchange for tuition, bundled his prized books and headed back to his mother’s farm. There, in solitude and isolation, as the plague continued its deadly sweep, Isaac Newton (December 25, 1642–March 19, 1727) dreamt up the fulcrum that would dislodge humanity from the Dark Ages; there, the apple — real or apocryphal — fell, and in its shadow rose the revolutionary idea of gravity, which the young man envisioned as a force “extending to the orb of the Moon” all the way from the Earth, without “cutoff or boundary.” It was there, too, that he set out to compute that force, “requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth”; in the act of computing it, as a necessity of that act, he invented calculus. [isaacnewton-2.jpg?resize=680%2C436] Isaac Newton In his excellent [Isaac Newton]( ([public library]( — a gold standard of biography and of storytelling bridging the scientific with the poetic, which also gave us [the story behind the famous “standing on the shoulders of giants” metaphor]( — James Gleick writes of the young Newton’s plague-driven return home: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]He built bookshelves and made a small study for himself. He opened the nearly blank thousand-page [commonplace book]( he had inherited from his stepfather and named it his Waste Book. He began filling it with reading notes. These mutated seamlessly into original research. He set himself problems; considered them obsessively; calculated answers, and asked new questions. He pushed past the frontier of knowledge (though he did not know this). The plague year was his transfiguration. Solitary and almost incommunicado, he became the world’s paramount mathematician. [blake_newton.jpg?resize=680%2C522] Newton by William Blake (Tate Britain) From the fortunate platform of a long life — he lived to eighty-four, more than double the era’s life expectancy, his casket shouldered by dukes and earls — Newton would look back on his most intellectually fertile period of the plague years with the recognition that “truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.” Complement this fragment of Gleick’s indispensable [Isaac Newton]( with Tocqueville on [stillness as a form of action]( and the trailblazing 18th-century French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet, who popularized Newton’s science, on [the nature of genius]( then revisit Gleick’s splendid reading of and reflection on [Elizabeth Bishop’s poem about the nature of knowledge](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and solace in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. (If you've had a change of heart or circumstance and wish to rescind your support, you can do so [at this link]( monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays and offers the week's most unmissable articles. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](