Last night I went out to eat with a friend and had a great time. Since I’ve been dragging ass lately, I’d considered not going but thought, I’ve got to get out of the house, I’ve got to have fun. Well, I’m glad I did. The food was good, the company was better, and I drank enough wine to actually think, Eh, life isn’t so bad, I’m not THAT sick.

As it turns out, I also drank a lot of coffee. When I got home I finished last night’s blog, which I’d started earlier in the day. (You should read it–it’s good.) Then I watched one episode of Breaking Bad, intent on falling asleep afterwards. With the time change, this was around four-thirty in the morning. But then I just lay there, wide awake. Eventually I downloaded three phone apps (applications, Mom) to help me better understand the phases of the moon and the position of the planets. I don’t want to become an astronomer, but I would like to better grasp the elementary movements of the heavens. Most of the time, “up there” is a complete mystery to me.

Best I can tell, I fell asleep around seven in the morning.

This afternoon I woke up with not much of a voice. I’ve had all this sinus crud lately, and I guess I overused my vocal chords at dinner last night. It was worth it, but now I just need to take it easy. I’m supposed to go out-of-town later this week, so we’ll see how I recover. Currently I’m thinking of my health like one of those paddle balls, the kind with a paddle that’s attached with a little rubber ball with elastic string. In this scenario, my physical body would be the little ball, and life itself would be the paddle, kind of smacking me around.

I go up, I come down. I go out, I come back in.

Boing, boing, boing.

My “big event” today was going to Walmart. (I hope those words never come out of my mouth again.) Anyway, I went to pick up a prescription (anti-histamine), but ended up buying groceries also, since I figured I could use some road snacks if I go out-of-town. When I got home, I put away the groceries, ate “lunch,” then started to read the last one-hundred pages in the book about quantum physics I’ve been reading lately. But then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I finished the book. Honestly, I skimmed a lot, since the information was a lot to take in. Still, it was fascinating, and I was particularly intrigued by a discussion about The Big Bang. Apparently there’s evidence that rather than exploding at some point in history and continuing to expand “forever and ever, amen,” the material of the universe will expand “so far,” then begin to contract. In fact, some scientists believe that the universe was contracting before The Big Bang, that it was basically compressing itself like some sort of cosmic Jack-in-the-Box, and that The Big Bang was the “surprise” moment. For this reason, some now refer to whole process as The Big Bounce, almost like the universe itself is a paddle ball that goes out and comes back in again.

The book didn’t mention it, but this is an idea that’s proposed in a lot of spiritual philosophies, that the universe is like your very heart that beats. It expands, it contracts–it expands, it contracts. Universes are created, universes are destroyed. The whole process begins again. Personally, I like this idea. It makes me think that everything that’s going on “down here” and “up there” is really quite natural. Like, it’s all part of the game. Specifically, it reminds me that for every destruction, there’s a re-creation. It reminds me that nothing in life sits still. No matter how terrible your circumstance, it absolutely has to change. So if it feels like you’re falling, if it feels like life has thrown you down to the ground, don’t worry. Just like a rubber ball or the universe itself, you’ll bounce back.