A Personal Transcript from the Samuel Oschin Planetarium Showing: OCEANS OF GRAVITY

A PERSONAL TRANSCRIPT FROM THE SAMUEL OSCHIN PLANETARIUM SHOWING: OCEANS OF GRAVITY

A token of love from me, to thee, Sarah Mapps Douglass via the Library Company of Philadelphia

content warning: childhood sexual abuse

Space is a concept that most can never understand; Autumn and I, we know it well.

We tussled with it floating upon the endless sea, taken by darkness that stripped all hope. We converged with it arriving upon these shores, the starless night warning that where we were going would not be safe. Then, once we thought we had gotten far past it, we collided anew. The lightless dome closing upon us.

Again, again, Space utters, I’ve taken from you again.

It’s a deluge of darkness that has swept back into our lives. It has stolen Breath from our hands, and she’s never coming home.

I ask: How did we end up here? This question requires the most urgent answer, but there is not enough time. The stars cannot find us. Our ancestors cannot find us. We cannot find us.

Sshh, whispers the halls of the observatory, your queue.

OCEANS OF GRAVITY (SCRIPT)

OPEN WITH LIGHTS OFF; MUTED MUSIC; GALACTIC ROOF PROJECTION FADE-IN; VOICE-OVER (V.O.) READY. LIVE STORYTELLER ON DECK.

V.O.: What are gravitational waves?

STORYTELLER: Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of space-time and are generated during certain gravitational interactions. They propagate outward from their source as waves, traveling at the speed of light.

It is only one thing that I have done.
But it is this one thing that I have done again and again.

My chest warps just as it should, mutilating itself each time I think of Autumn’s beautiful face. I am sick with love, but I am also still doing this one thing. A hope of mine, so selfish a hope, is that it destroys me before I am witness to the creation of my husband’s destruction: a wave, a tsunami strong and ready to consume.

Its birthing point: Me.

V.O.: How are gravitational waves formed?

STORYTELLER: When an object accelerates, it creates ripples in space, just like how a boat causes ripples in its wake. Keep such a vision in mind — these space ripples, like boat ripples, are what we know as gravitational waves. At first, these waves are extremely weak. And so, they are difficult to detect. However, though they are nearly invisible, do not discount their power. These rippling waves exist in the millions, replications of the same archetype. Like ants, they’re always there and making more, ever ready, for when they will devour the queen.

It is quite simple to understand, really — this one thing that I do again and again, a rippling wave crashing itself through time. I can say this is the result of having lost Breath, but that is too easy. It is the result of my father dying on me, but that is too easy, too. It is the result of my father’s habit of lying beside me, his habit of finger fucking me into the space-time oblivion. The way his memory was able to slip silent into erasure. The things he did, vapid, rising, and bisecting, a toxic gas which, no matter how much it tries, can never meld with air.

What was done can’t be seen. It is difficult to detect. But never discount it. It exists in the millions, every moment and every second, making more and waiting to devour me whole.

V.O.: What causes these ripples?

STORYTELLER: Some of the most violent and energetic forces in the entire universe.

I just can’t.

I told him no. I whispered to my mother, who was no longer there. I mourned to my sister, who was no longer there. He told me that we were all we had left, that he needed to hold on to what was his — what we had was so very little; we were strange and alone and the land was new; I didn’t know anything.

I was afraid.

V.O.: What are these waves good for?

STORYTELLER: Well, these rippling waves are plenty helpful, particularly for observational astronomy. These waves are used to collect data about their sources — the location of their very beginnings. They weave the pathways to detect their own origins.

In the early days, the neighbors stared. My father made me promise that I would do well in class, that I would practice their tongue, that I would become invisible, and that I would keep my mouth shut. He was embarrassed here, and he deeply did not want to be. In those moments, he grasped my hand tight, dragging me to wherever we needed to be: the schoolyard, the SNAP office, the grocery store, the temple, or otherwise.

I knew that we were different from the people around us, inside and out. What transpired between my father and me was just one more thing that marked our difference. I didn’t know how to explain this to others. But to myself, I knew, and I felt soiled.

I would cry every time I came at a time when I didn’t understand what it meant to come. I would lie awake after he was done, wanting to speak with my mother and sister in the dead of night, but then I would not. I was certain, in that condition and in that way, they would not want to speak with me.

The next thought I usually had was this:

If we had never crossed the ocean, if the killings had never begun, if the tiger had never shown up, if we had never lost each other, he never would have done all that he had come to do.

V.O.: Let’s turn now toward those very origins.

STORYTELLER: It is believed that these waves come from binary star systems composed of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes; events such as supernovae; and the formation of the early universe shortly after the big bang.

The origins —

they hardly matter anymore.

The void has arrived, and I am drowned in the dark. I cannot weather this grief, and neither can Autumn. After everything we’ve survived, we were not prepared for this. I know because he has tried, and he has failed. Because I have tried, and I have unceremoniously failed.

It is too late, for me, for us.

Breath is dead.

Understand.

They hardly matter anymore —

the origins.

Rose with open scroll, Amy Matilda Cassey via the Library Company of Philadelphia

TRIGGER ROOF PROJECTION TO STAR-SPECIFIC COVERAGE.

V.O.: If definitions are needed:

WHITE DWARF VISUAL COVERAGE; ASSIST WITH SPOTLIGHT GOBO.

STORYTELLER: A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed of electron-degenerate matter. It is dense with a mass like the sun and a volume like the earth. Consider these dwarves like quartz: impenetrable and anchoring.

NEUTRON STAR VISUAL COVERAGE; ASSIST WITH STROBE LIGHTING.

STORYTELLER: Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of very large stars before they self-destruct. Consider the collapse like a building just as it detonates to dust. These fragments are the smallest and densest of stars in existence.

BLACK HOLE VISUAL COVERAGE; ASSIST WITH FULL BLACKOUT.

STORYTELLER: A black hole is a region of space with such strong gravitational pull that nothing — absolutely nothing — can escape from it. Not particles, not electromagnetic radiation, and not even light. These holes are invisible. Because no light can enter, they are lost to the darkness. Close your eyes and imagine a darkness not unlike the one we’re sitting in. Imagine it so vast and so complete, it could never be escaped.

SUPERNOVAE VISUAL COVERAGE; ASSIST WITH PROGRESSIVE FLOOD.

STORYTELLER: Last, supernovae are transient astronomical events. They only occur during the last stellar evolutionary stages of a massive star’s life. These lives are marked from the beginning by their own impending dramatic destruction. They will cease only after one final, titanic explosion.

It is like this:

Autumn is the dwarf.

Breath is neutron stars.

My father the black hole.

And, I am the supernovae.

Even though Breath is collapsed,

I love her.

I love her.

I loved her.

CLOSE WITH LIGHTS OFF; MUTED MUSIC; GALACTIC ROOF PROJECTION FADE-OUT; VOICE-OVER (V.O.) DONE. LIVE STORYTELLER ON DECK.

It ends.

There is a quiet scatter of applause. I can hear the whispers and shuffling of feet as the audience exits the dome.

I remain. Fettered to the dark.

I am almost certain of where the one thing originates. The stars, our ancestors, my gut — all have taught specific ways of knowing, and I wonder if this is truth illuminated. I am trembling, afraid again.

Something is here in the dark. I reach out with my hands. Then it is gone. I stifle back all sound. My fingers close upon nothing. I beat my fist against my chest, the hollow thump my tether, keeping me from Space.

After Breath died, I had a dream that my father crawled up from his grave, entered our home, and took my breath away.

NOELLE MARIE FALCIS

Noelle Marie Falcis is a creative and academic who has centered her work around the intersection of narrative and performative praxis. Most interested in visionary re-memory and reimagination of histories and, therefore, futures, she purses storytelling through fictive writing and movement artistry. She uses these dual forms to better understand the diasporic, decolonizing life, and how these factors inform her identity as a Filipina American. Her fiction holds mythologic and folkloric elements of her heritage and tends to be grounded in both the desert and city landscapes in which she grew up. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary magazines such as Seventh Wave Literary, Kartika Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, amongst others. She is a VONA Voices and Tin House Workshop alumna as well as a current LARB Publishing Workshop fellow. She is the founder of Gunita Collective, a contemporary-indigenous artists’ group centered upon communal memory via multidisciplinary narratives. The collective has performed in various venues throughout Los Angeles.