For me personally, the fact that resonance lies at the foundation of reality is a source of delight and amazement. As a lifelong amateur musician and composer, I’ve long understood the inner workings of pianos, clarinets and guitars. But I was completely astonished to learn, back when I was a graduate student, that the structures of the universe, even within my own body, operate on similar principles.
Yet this secret musicality of our cosmos would be impossible were it not for the Higgs field.
Where I live in rural New Mexico, I see striped and hooded skunks regularly throughout the year. I see skunk tracks all the time, every day, around my house, in the fine substrate of the road that leads up to the irrigation ditch, in any bit of dirt or mud, and in the garden enclosed against deer and javelina but not skunk. Skunks regularly explore my wrap-around porch, so that my husband and I watch the animal out one window and then hurry to see it from another. Skunks are often under the bird feeders. We smell them in the morning—the result of some interaction with another animal. We’ve startled them in the early evening. They jump. We jump. Once, jumping back, a hooded skunk fell off the rise of the porch onto his back. Chagrined, he waved his paws in the air like a baby or a pill bug before more calmly turning over and galumphing away. These skunks have never sprayed or shown us any threat behavior. We don’t have any pets for them to worry about. If we live companionably with any wild mammal, we live companionably with skunks.
I’m always amazed at how Ellen Hopkins can convey so much in so few words, residing in a gray area between prose and poetry.
Her latest novel in verse, “Sync,” does exactly that as it switches between twins Storm and Lake during the pivotal year before they age out of the foster system. Separated years ago, the two write to each other in an effort to maintain their unparalleled bond. In the process, we learn about their home life before the state of California took custody, and the placements — good and bad — in between.