Gusty, blustery, and tempestuous - this past week has been a whirlwind for me, both in the weather and in my writing. I'm having trouble sitting down with one thing at a time, and I can feel myself being thrown in all directions even when I'm inside, safe from the wind. As I was trying to write my way out of the whirlwind and into a blog post, I recalled this piece, which I wrote some time ago, sitting in the Starbucks on Calgary Trail. Somehow, it seems appropriate for such a windy time. It's called "Motion."
“...a body with no net force acting on it will either remain at rest or continue to move with uniform speed in a straight line, according to its initial condition of motion. In fact, in classical Newtonian mechanics, there is no important distinction between rest and uniform motion...” ("uniform motion." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 12 Dec. 2010)
The cars move past at such uniform speed that I wonder if it is them that are moving at all. I imagine myself sitting here, sliding sideways in this coffee shop while the rest of the world stands still, and I wonder how long it will take me to go around all the way, whether I’ll even make it all the way around.
A silver car speeds up, passing the others, and the coffee shop stops moving. I stop moving. I become an inanimate point, and the world revolves- not around me, but outside of me, beyond me.
The only other stillness I can find is a scattering of pigeons perched on the telephone wires, and I wonder if they are moving or not.
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