The Big Bang

The silence is split asunder as the first of hundreds of tiny explosions erupt across the night sky.

Far off there are people Oowing, and Ahrring at the spectacle these coloured lights make at the climax of their brief lives.

Each light weaving and darting through the sky, like one of a shoal of tropical fish in some Caribbean lagoon, each darting round one another to reach their goal.

But unlike the gentle ripple and hushed breezes that accompany that far off lagoon, these crisscrossing lights are accompanied by the booms and whooshes that echo the explosion from the very birth of the universe. That awaken a remembrance of that primal Big Bang throwing forth the building blocks of our world and every other one circling those pick pricks of light that hang in each night sky.

Is that what were really seeking to celebrate, the burning sparks of light bringing the building blocks of life with them, building planets from which the eruption of molten rock explode and burst forth from the surface and the accompanying hiss and sizzle of steam as the congealing magma cools and seals.

Then in the billions of years that follow, the world finally falls silent save for the intermittent crash of Thunder heralding the patter of rain. But eventually life pours forth, with its roars and bellows, noise once more enveloping the planet.   

Maybe it’s the terror of that first mighty bellowing sound exploding in the dark, that’s led us to build new stories and tales forged around the light and its meaning. Legends of Demons and Plotters, of the triumph of light over dark and the battle of faith against heresy. New tales to tell and to celebrate, to help us face our anxieties and apprehensions.

But in the end it’s the memory that matters, at our core with each explosion we’ll still “Remember, Remember” that very first burst of light and noise, because nobody can hear a tale being told over the sound of the Big Bang.