When The Dead Don’t Speak and the Living Won’t

ARLINGTON, Va. — I am told I may discern the fragmentation of the universe by observing how boulders become rocks, how rocks crumble to pebbles, pebbles to dust. They mean for me to remove myself from society and live alone among nature (a la Tu Fu or Wittgenstein) where I will surely understand how time expands and the horizon grows in a way that approximates the infinite.