A little over five years ago, I was involved in some strange activity at the centre of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It went a little like this…
The moment we stepped off the bus, and out of time, you could have been in the English countryside.
I left the tarmac, where someone had sprayed a smiley face, and moved on to the track. We observed the vow of silence. I looked at my feet. Dust the colour of moon, and snail shells dotted the landscape: large loose spirals, thick, bleached, uncrushable. We walked, silent, along the track, beside cool water flowing over moon-bed rocks, and crystals. I took one with me.
Either side were lines of trees, protecting us from burning in the sun-dried wheatfields. Flowers dotted verges: white, yellow, pink; and forget-me-not-blue. May blooms in April. Some were familiar—wild garlic in the mud, here’s Jack, by the hedge. Others, changed subtly: European subspecies. Everything larger than life.
Ritual focus on each step, keep on looking down. The grey path. The white rays, segments of the epic dress. We twenty-three held one strip each of off-white train. Suddenly, a van appears. It’s beautiful! Burnt black to purple, rust and everything between. A few half-molten tubes and pipes poke out from somewhere where was once an engine. Lingering here is smoke, some dying bonfire.
Ahead the irrigation ditch led us down to a river. A more-than-green lawn raised within the crook of flow, our fellows resting gently there beside a bridge. Timeless. Five have gone ahead though. “It’s too far”, we hear. It is not too far.
Four horsewomen approached us from the distant side. We fear Conquest, War, Famine, even Death; but we were here for the Eschaton. The four approached the bridge, but turned away down some more hidden track. Again our way was clear. So then we crossed.
What we did beyond the bridge: it may never be told. Save this much: when we got there, the field was entirely green. Someone said three tarot cards were found right at its centre: The Fool; The Tower; The Sun. Behind, we left magnolia from Liverpool; almost like the one in Carl Jung’s dream. The ur-tree which illuminated Jung, illumined its own inner being too.
We re-crossed the bridge, we were done with time and so I loosed my watch; I flung it in the water, right beneath the bridge, not far from where three naked bodies played. That Swiss timepiece buried 'neath the flow of time: present and past, and future, contained in space we passed. The hour eternal present in the crystal riverbed.
One of our number was laid low, by heat, beside the water. By water's flow we tended softly to his brow. We carried him back to the coach.
We had returned.
The Large Hadron Collider at Geneva is 27 kilometres long. A torus in the Earth beneath the Alps. Filling its vacuum, the largest concentration of pure nothing* in the known universe.
*We call it Gnothing, Gnowing, though it's Empty Space. It’s full to bursting with untapped potential.
At its centre is a field.
This all happened. This will happen. All this happens now.
In a field. At the centre of time and of space.
Dan Sumption, 2019
What we did beyond the bridge? It may be shown. 23 fragments of the epic dress:
Happy Bealtaine.
I’m not quite sure what Tim Arnold’s Super Connected is, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing it in London on 4th June. Perhaps I’ll see you there? Doesn’t this look fascinating:
Super Connected is currently touring the UK. Find out more on Tim’s website.
A Field at The Centre of Europe