Continuing the tone of my previous post, here's a good section from a play that I found today while I was going through my data archives. Atom is a beautiful word.
TILLIE: He told me to look at my hand, for a part of it came from a star that exploded too long ago to imagine. This part of me was formed from a tongue of fire that screamed through the heavens until there was our sun. And this part of me - this tiny part of me - was on the sun when it itself exploded and whirled in a great storm until the planets came to be.
And this small part of me was then a whisper of the earth. When there was life, perhaps this part of me got lost in a fern that was crushed and covered until it was coal. And then it was a diamond millions of year later - it must have been a diamond as beautiful as the star from which it had first come.
Or perhaps this part of me became lost in a terrible beast, or became part of a huge bird that flew above the primeval swamps. And he said this thing was so small - this part of me was so small it couldn't be seen - but it was there from the beginning of the world.
And he called this bit of me an atom. And when he wrote the word, I fell in love with it. Atom. Atom. What a beautiful word.
