The Trip-Thud Theory

 
We had our own theory that explained the creation of the universe, Catherine and I. The Big Bang theory always seemed so, well, boringly masculine in it's thinking. It's the sort of theory that pale physicists (and even paler magicians), who’ve spent far too much of their adolescence indoors picking at acne and dreaming of the hugeness of the cosmos and the rarity of sex, would come up with. So, in the course of an evening of quiet contemplation we came up with this:

The Trip-Thud Theory of Creation

It's pretty straightforward, and goes like this: Creating a universe is a pretty demanding sort of job, and a Creator who's going to have to pack a whole lot of everything into a very small singularity to kick things off is likely to find the planning stage a bit of a trial. So it’s fair to expect He’ll need the odd evening off for a drink and a fairly speculative session of “Woss-it-all-gonna be about, I mean really, when you get right down to it, eh? Woss-the-point gonna be?”.

And having slaved away at the plans all week He’ll no doubt find himself at closing time staggering out of the snug bar of the Bacchus Arms Hotel with a right skinful and will head for the nearest all-hours (figuratively-speaking) Indian take-away, (putting some serious grunt into archetypal patterns of future human behaviour incidentally) and half an hour later will be groping in the primordial trouser-pocket for his keys at the front gate of Chez Tout.

In the meantime - not that time exists yet, a-priori, or even post-priori, now that I think of it - the paper-bag containing the Cosmic Vindaloo, the Korma of Heavenly Bounty and a Prawn & Seafood Biriani with all the trimmings, will be reaching the point at which the sogginess at the bottom is rapidly approaching the minimum degree of tensile strength required to hold things together under the weight of the aromatic product of God's late night alcoholic yearning for sustenance.

Fumbling at the door with the keys will take critical seconds (of unreal time) that cause the cosmic combination of tiredness, inebriation, sogginess, clumsiness and buggerment (some of the most fundamental principles underlying the whole of creation) to coalesce at the un-moment when God leans after the retreating door as it swings open.

At that moment occurs the Trip. When God catches his boot on the front step, and in accordance with the newly-minted Laws of Physics and the Guidelines of Self-Preservation, his enormous body falls forward into the hallway and his arms swing wildly out in front of him.

Then comes the Thud. And as the shock of carpeted floor resonates through His holy frame, the star-strained and soggy paper gives way and the contents of the universe, spicy, hot, majestic and infinite in it's variety burst forth from the torn and flapping bag and fly in an ever expanding interstellar spray of loose firmament and little bits of coconut.

The time the mighty spray of creation takes to expand and unfurl is all the time in our universe. Mighty, meaty nebula, shot through with an incandescent assortment of rare spices (and not a little dust swept up from the spice factory floor) give rise to all the infinite variety of life, the universe and everything. Look up at the night sky and you will see the ever-expanding spiral of the Milky Way (Coconut milk and a Goats milk Lassi actually) as it hurtles ever outward on it's trip through the dark hallway of space/time in God's bijou, des-res, ‘two-up and an-infinite-number-down’ heaven.

The Crab Nebula is simply the succulent, doomed Friday night special danced into being by the many whirling arms at the Shiva Nataraj late night celestial kitchen. The mighty gas-clouds that illumine the heavens for those with the best telescopes were originally intended to gurgle through the digestive system of the Creator, causing him no end of remorse late on a Saturday morning.

The stars are just the heat-signatures of cooling pieces of the celestial take-away as it expands ever-outwards. Black holes are simply tiny pieces of the soggy paper bag, observable to us now only as mysterious inverse gaps in the fabric that once held all of creation in check. We are merely insignificant passengers on the lost left-overs of God’s Sunday fry-up. In the world’s before us monkeys Primal Chaos rained down along the hallway.

It’s a theory, anyway, and a pretty good one for explaining the observable facts too, I think. The complex interplay of the various Gods necessary for our tiny existence can be glimpsed behind the veil of myth. Many, many Gods were involved in the universal creative process. Probably not many Goddesses though. They would have cooked something wholesome and satisfying at home, possibly using parts of some of the Gods. Although it’s probably safest to assume that they’re involved somewhere in the back-story and to give them credit for the bits in life that make some kind of sense.

The theory also gives some shape to the issue of what happens at the end of everything. When the still sweet but rapidly cooling universe hit's the carpet it's a pretty fair bet that most of us will be in for a whole lot of trouble. The First Bounce may send huge lumps of the universe crashing back through itself, spinning whole galaxies off course, causing calamitous chain-reactions more powerful than all the atom bombs ever made. Let’s see Bruce Willis stop the clock on that little lot. Lumps of the less spicy lamb bits may be snaffled by the dog (God’s always struck me as a dog-person) and condemned to wander the infinite until, well, what dogs do.

What can be salvaged will be little more than the odd broken pappadum and any of the sauce left in the plastic containers, and perhaps a very small tub of cucumber raita or sweet chilli dipping sauce. And a hairy garlic naan, there’s always one, and always hairier than it should be. In fact most of creation is destined to be sworn at and then scrubbed out of the carpet over a very long period of space/time, and eventually trodden in to the background radiation of the hall runner. Our own tiny solar system may be doomed to fall between the fibres of the carpet, only to be vacuumed up next week by the Dust-Buster of the Divine Being.

Which won't leave much for making the next universe, will it?