well, for one the data present allowed some of said smart people to calculate the age of the universe within a 1% margin of error. (the universe is 13.7 billion years old give or take a couple hundred million years, in case you were wondering). more interesting, though equally abstract, is the fact that according to the findings in this photo, space is indeed flat, not curved, not soccer ball shaped, and it will continue to expand indefinitely.
now the part most relevant to you and i- of all this old, flat, expanding space, every THING (which is to say anything made up of particles or measurable energy, including planets, moons, mysterious obelisks, suns, asteroids, comets, ejected dilythium crystals, quasars, neutrinos, death stars, space dust, jump-gates, and, of course all life) accounts for only… drum roll please… 4% of the total. yes indeedy. 4%. soak it up. the rest is made up of 23 percent dark matter, and 73 percent dark energy.
obviously we’ve “known” for a long time that the universe was made up mostly of dark stuff, meaning stuff we could not see, but now we have nice neat percentages to gawk at. the “we are so small in the scheme of things” factor is reinforced mathematically, but that’s not the real beauty of these numbers as i see it. in that we know almost nothing about dark matter and dark energy the data from this photograph really helps provide an accurate calculation of just how much we DON’T know. 96% at the very least. very nonist findings.
anyhow, if you’d like to read more about the WMAP and the implications of it’s data try here, and here. enjoy.

“i just don’t know, i just don’t know, i just don’t know, i just don’t know, i just don’t know.” herbert, herbie to his increasingly scarce friends, sits and shakes his head. the information inside that head is hopelessly jumbled, conflicting, inconclusive; the shaking is natural enough, like the jostling of a package to get a better idea of what’s inside. “i’ve tried everything”. he doesn’t say this out-loud, we say it for him. we impose coherent sentences onto the image of him sitting there, slumped, glazed and grumbling. “smoking, smoking a lot, not smoking. on the wagon, off the wagon. partying, earnestness, quietness, solitude, domesticity, philosophies, instinct, opinions, disinterest, cynicism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, abstinence, writing, painting, sloth, hard work, love, longing, hatred, romanticism, sleeping pills… i’ve tried everything”.
he looks pretty terrible really. discheveled and vaguely desperate. but while he slumps there chain smoking let me just ask you this, if he’s been trying all these things, can’t we assume he’s been busy? “love, longing, hatred…” sounds like a pretty full life really. so what is wrong with herbert then exactly? why does he teeter? why do the tears well up? what can be so bad about a life so full of things? well, the short of it is, herbert, through no fault of his own is human. so he sits there, smoking, unraveling. his cat washes her brown belly contentedly, totally focused, confident that it is exactly what she ought to be doing. god, as ever, has no soothing words, no comment.

a cigarette. an empty briefcase at the curb. someone running for the train which has inevitably pulled away. a loud sneeze. a lost tourist. a pothole filled with filthy rainwater. a beer ad on a bus flank. pink six inch heels. a bottle in a wet bag. loves labor lost zipped in a fanny pack. an arm in a fresh unsigned cast. voyager1, floating eight billion miles from the sun. the third rail humming. a stopped watch held close to an ear. wet hair in rows bobbing down ninth street. a taxi in the crosswalk. curses under a woman’s breath. a wobbly chair. mint flavored toothpicks in a pile. chemtrails above the cloud cover. clashing colognes on the deli line. torn fishnet stockings. the taste of stamp glue, as the bills drop in the box. “no radio in this car”. picassos hung in a dark room. anarchy written on the sidewalk in chalk. someone sweeping a pile of hair at the barber shop. the hum of a motorized wheelchair. the mayor eating breakfast. a garbage can crammed with broken umbrellas. a dog in an argyle sweater. a woman in a green dress picking up wet shit with a plastic bag. used porn mags for sale on a blanket. homo erectus bones under glass… all this and the rain has only just stopped. work hasn’t even started.

the one you just knew would come five years prior. the one you quietly romanced in your mind. you could see it then, soft lit maybe but clear enough. there you were, barefoot, bearded, holding a cocked bottle of scotch to your mouth five feet above some filthy kitchen floor somewhere. this moment seemed inevitable then, and it seemed like poetry. nothing could have been more appealing in those wee hours passed. but here you are. and? well? is it poetry?

all the cliches about wisdom offer little insight when it comes to reality of course. you’re well read for an ignoramus, but all the poems of the great poets, all the resonant philosophies of the big minds, all the earnest words from your own father’s mouth illuminate little more than their own wise faces. when your young you see those bare feet clearly, but they are bathed in the blood of a million conquests, they are gnarled from naked treks over frozen mountains. you see the pilling robe, the grime, maybe a limp and a handful of scars, but they are bolstered by the glories of a great man’s life. everything is a trophy in these visions. the gnarled feet hard earned. the scotch much deserved. you see the the worn face and the ashen hands grasping the thick bottle, but you infer a toppling clutch of massive paintings, a pile of yellowing manuscripts. you naively impose impossible peaks and valleys into that vision. but when you find yourself there in that bulb lit kitchen, barefoot, robed, drinking scotch from the bottle, you can maybe understand for the first time what was tragic about those poems, why the philosophers were pulling their hair out, what your father’s words were cautioning you about. reality. the bare, bulb-lit kitchen reality all that youthful romanticism so thoroughly shrouds.

when you actually find yourself in that kitchen you realize maybe that the scotch is still well deserved, only it’s not earned through faithful service in ideological revolutions, nor through the fevered heat of a genius’ toil. you realize that the scotch is earned by not cracking and curling up into a ball under your desk. it’s earned by paying taxes, by going to the weddings your invited to, by riding the subway, by standing in line. it’s earned by not murdering any of the myriad of filthy swine you come across each day. you earn that scotch by just getting through the days, plain and simple.

so here you are young-blood. you made it. welcome to the future. enjoy.

a six year old girl, or thereabouts, was standing at the curb. she was standing beside a big van some guy, her father i suppose, was unloading. she was being quiet, which i whole heartedly approve of in people her age, and generally well behaved. i would not even have noticed her chances are had it not been for the old timer walking past. an old man in an old man’s shabby clothes. not quite skid row but certainly no better than two room tenement. the sad old type not uncommon on avenue a. his shoes scraped over the sidewalk with each step and in his pants was a gigantic buldge. this buldge was not of the penis-erectus variety but of the thirty-pound-inoperable-tumor variety. pretty scary looking actually. and, of course, there was the little girl. her eyes were locked on this buldge and she was visibly put off. imposibly confused it seemed to me.

so, can instances as simple as this plant seeds for the bountiful harvest of future neurosis? when witnesing scenes of this sort with children i always wonder weather i am also witnessing a subconcious turning point of some sort, a line of pilons and flares on the childs inner highway veering her off in unforseen directions. will there forever after be a fear, a desire, a seemingly irrational and rootless aversion or fetish born in that instance?  will there be years of therapy leading to the climactic flashback under hypnosis? will she heroicly don her lab coat after years of medical school to become a leading groin cancer researcher? will she find herself nude and greased in some venice beach apartment running her red press-on nails over the stretched taut chicken skin of a scrotal tumor while the cameras roll? as i write this the dramatic overtones repel me and make me think it’s unlikley. but perhaps when i was a lad i stood at a curb myself one day and witnessed a descheveled, out of work shakespearian actor over doing it, panting, fawning, butchering some soliloquy. who knows?