40 Years Ago I Had Lunch with Ed Witten, One of the Fathers of String Theory

Devon Miller-Duggan

who majored in History & minored in Linguistics

before following his father into Theoretical Physics.

History, of course, is comprises a distance of layers of strings.

Linguistics, also from distance, layers of strings.

In the end he explained that it was not my fault since string theory is,

in the end (which I suspect it does not have), a 24th century science stumbled upon

in the 20th century. This helped. The universe is a string of things we never look up properly.

So I think “Cat’s Cradle,” with its back-and-forth forms—

one god’s small hands plucking strings from the hands of another small god

at exact intersections, tugging out new shapes or repeating

one already played. It can string on for hours—tangle & tug, tug & tangle—

layers & sliding intersections of string.

Or warp & weft, shuttled back & forth, weft shifting colors, warp moving

every-other/every-two/every-three up and down to catch each weft in one layer of a

thousand patterns. Or wound-for-storage strings of Christmas lights, unwound and trailed

from trees or streets or houses/entryways/cities to spark winter live.

Or my embroidery flosses—unruly metal, rayon, cotton, silk, wool—untangled,

needled across warp and weft. Strings making layers from layers, bumps & lines, zigs & knots.

Perhaps the universe is strings and any piece of Bach is one thread the old German

coaxed free, rescued from the clouds of Knowing and Unknowing, lines both parallel & unparallel,

something old & understood before it was born & named.

I weave threads through their reverses, holding everything in place: Equations I can touch,

and willingly go on un-understanding.