The Laws of Love and Physics

“Laws of physics

laws of love

of time and space

and the in-between place

In-between you and me

and where we are,

lost and looking

looking and lost…”

~ Kami Garcia, 'Beautiful Redemption'

This is a natural fact: live long enough, and you'll eventually have to say goodbye to your teachers.

This on the other hand is only an assumption, but one that I've got a strong feeling about: most teachers want as much as anything for us to grow into their shoes, to take their place  guiding the young ones on the way up.

A friend of mine was lost to cancer this past week, and yes indeed he was a physics teacher, in my old high school back on Long Island. Of course to me, not nearly smart enough for physics, he was simply a good friend. His name was Rudy Lehr, and more than a friend, he was an irreplaceable guide through the jittery high school years when we all felt truly clueless, oh, about every fifteen minutes or so.

There's one thing I'll never forget about those days, one thing for which I'll always be grateful. Rudy was the advisor for the National Honor Society at my old school. A bright but unmotivated student barely squeaking into the NHS, I missed out on giving any of the groovy speeches about Duty, Liberty, Fraternity or whatever, at our induction ceremony.

But Rudy got me up to the podium anyway, leading the Pledge of Allegiance. Of course in a pattern of behavior repeated numerous times since then, I took the opportunity to preface it with a ten-minute discourse on civic responsibility wherein I quoted, not cribbed lines from Byron or Yeats or Robert Frost like the other kids, but lyrics from Bob Dylan and the rock group Chicago. With legs like rubberbands and a heart full of icewater, most certainly gripping a vise-groove into the edges of the podium itself, this was my very first opportunity to express myself in public. To this very day, whenever there's been something to share that I just couldn't keep to myself, whether at a Town Council or Board of Ed meeting, or while teaching my fitness classes, I have Rudy Lehr to thank.

Like legions of old friends (including the gal I share my life with now), like so many people of importance who nevertheless have been out of my field of vision, out of the stream of my life for years and years, Rudy and I renewed our bonds of acquaintance through Facebook. You know, it astounds me when people gripe about FB (as we call it); about the color, the privacy issues, how the interface works, what the hell a 'poke' is. That kind of stuff. Forgetting, of course, that: 1) it has changed every life that it has come in contact with, more people than the Salk vaccine or penicillin or Hot Pockets or Justin Beiber; 2) it's free; 3) it has been instrumental in giving a networked voice to movements as diverse as Occupy Whatever to the Arab Spring to your Granny's quilting club; and 4) IT'S FREE. Some people are never satisfied, I guess. For a hilarious take on this phenomenon, Google comedian Louis CK's "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy"when the boss isn’t looking.

Anyway, when you first get in touch with people after a long time, well, you have to be ready for some surprises, right? I mean, you never know how people are gonna turn out, right? What strange political or religious views they've absorbed along the way, what nutty hairstyle or fashion sense.

Well, Rudy turned out all right. A lover of science, of the stars overhead and the great outdoors, of civil liberties and common sense. Turned out all right, and like any student would, I hoped he thought the same of me.

A lover of science? Why Rudy could be an absolute curmudgeon of science sometimes; in polar reaction to the right-wing religious regimentation prevalent in our present day. And he could indeed seem at times downright grave in his determined opposition to the stunting, limiting power of fundamentalist regime-think in these, our supposedly 'enlightened' modern societies.

But most often, Rudy's postings were as puckish as any schoolboy’s, wielding humor and mischievousness like a gleeful weapon, full to the brim with the certainty of what religious hard-liners have seemingly forgotten: it is ALL joy, ALL mystery and therefore, ALL adventure.

Underneath the wit and wonder of his presence online though, I could sense hints of disappointment; that the very religions formed out of primitive man's awe and respect for a universe full from end to end and top to bottom with things larger than himself, should seem so drained of all of those things. And contrarily all of the supposedly rigid and dour sciences were full of that wonderment and adventure every working day and night. As if, well, as if someone had to carry the flag. The flag of what? Of joy that we are here, joy that we came to be in the first place, and joy that we go on; carrying that banner not through generations of ignorance, but through generations of carefully gathered, meticulously researched, responsibly documented and fact-checked empirical evidence of the magnificent improbability of it all.

That love of science, of unknown adventure, of our mysterious existence itself; all things that should inspire equal parts awe and careful, responsible examination documented for future reference, I heard every single one of these things in Rudy's (online) voice as he announced, back in January, his diagnosis to us all. In no way seeking sympathy, but instead asking our companionship for the challenging voyage ahead, and closing by saying, "Please don't send prayers and angels to me. Rather send chocolate and rum," is there anything you need to know about the man that isn't summed up right there?  Or in subsequent observations about his therapies ("I was hoping that, due to the radiation, I would pick up some kind of superpower. Nothing, nada, I can't even communicate with fish. I don't glow in the dark either, only in infra-red and who sees that?").

Losing people I've known, hearing stoicism, religious resignation, childish bewilderment or high drama to the end, I had never heard anything like this. Blackly humorous, never maudlin, always straightforward. And always, always upbeat, giddily positive in his outlook. Knowing from a life of clear-headed observation that until the very second that all is lost, anything is possible. No fear, at least no fear that he wanted to trouble us with; no fear that was in any way more important than his anticipation of this new adventure, this final science project in which, eventually, we are all destined to be the test monkeys. The one where life, at last, experiments on us. He was a teacher at heart to the end; his final gift to us, his final lesson: that 'pragmatic' and 'hopeful' were not mutually exclusive states of mind.

But he was happy to the end also. Good sons, lots of friends to share this final journey, And a true-love partnership of the quality that we should all be lucky enough to know in that autumn season of our lives. The photos of the two of them, Rudy and his wife Anne, belong in the Encyclopaedia (or at least Wikipedia) under 'Love', 'Happiness', 'Companionship'; all those best good words.

Someone once told me years ago "Love never dies; you just do different things with it." It occurred to me, back then, how much that sounded like one of those Laws of Thermodynamics, you know? Not the 'entropy' one, or the one about systems breaking down and such. but the one about matter being changeable but essentially indestructible. The Law of Conservation of Matter maybe? I don't remember. Rudy would know which one, of course, chiding me for not taking his class.

Nevertheless it makes me think and hope, that if MATTER is indestructible and always with us, then by the grace of God maybe THE THINGS THAT MATTER are always with us also. Things defined by all of those best good words: Love, Companionship, Happiness.

These of course have been  banner weeks for the deceased, what with the loss of renowned screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the great Irish character-actor Milo O'Shea, the indescribable Roger Ebert, the unforgettable Annette Funicello. Even comic-book pioneer Carmine Infantino, who helped create from scratch, from fifty years of ink and paper and magical imagination, many of the fictional heroes modern corporate cinema is depending on for their future bankrolls. Greatness tumbling one after the other from equally great heights, as if the whole business of who to include in the annual Oscar-night 'Memoriam' sequence should be determined in one fell swoop, one weeklong avalanche of loss.

In thinking about my friend Rudy, I’m reminded of Richard Phillips Feynman. Born in Far Rockaway, Queens in 1918 and a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, Feynman was known for his work in both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium and particle physics. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams.

He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing, and introducing the now- popular concept of nanotechnology. Holder of the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at Caltech, it can be easily assumed that without the life’s work of Richard Feynman, Michael Crichton would’ve never had anything to write about except Jasper Johns and ER doctors.

One of the most publicly known scientists in the world both during and after his life’s adventure, Feynman nevertheless is quoted as saying,

“Physics isn’t the most important thing in the world. Love is.”

He passed away, into his next great adventure, in 1988.

I think what I always think whenever someone, anyone, passes away: how it is that the world keeps on spinning, the world full of things great and small, minute and meaningful that they will never know, never share, never voice an opinion on. So that with every new headline or happenstance there is, once again, over and over, "What would they have thought or said, about this or that?"

But of course they are not here anymore.

Except in our hearts perhaps.  Is it not so great a stretch to imagine that, within the small space of our chests, there are in fact uncountable warm beating chambers, as many as we desire for those lost ones to inhabit in fond remembrance, companions for the entirety of the long ride left to us?

This is what has worked for me, after seeing so many friends, relations and teachers leave this adventure for the next one; this dream, this fantasy, of these heart-rooms where the dear departed reside, endlessly expandable and multiplying to contain them all, keeping them close enough for comfort or counsel. A dream having nothing whatsoever to do with the laws of physics, and everything whatsoever to do with the laws of love.