String Theory

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I don’t know very much about physics, but here’s everything I know about string theory,
more or less. And a bit about some other things I know, as well.

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The first thing I ever learned about string theory was that it was made up to tie all of our
disparate branches of science together, which makes me think of it like a string that goes
round and round the universe, holding it together like a bundle of wheat with a cinched waist.
Holding together our Melania Trumps and the quasars,
our traffic rules and our cats in boxes with the dwarf stars and the wormholes
and all the little bits that make up atoms, tied together with an asteroid belt.
And that’s our Albert Einstein, standing out there, the galaxy’s conductor, our new century’s
Atlas, keeping the universe from falling apart.

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The second thing I learned about string theory (and something I probably did know all along)
is that it doesn’t actually work like that. Really, not even close.
Instead, it’s the idea that everything in our universe is made up of tiny strings. To a physicist,
a string is anything that is much longer than it is wide. Physicists see strings in much the
same way I see people. A person is anything that is much more thought than science.
But the essential thing about string theory is that no one really knows if it’s true or not.
Although by following that train of thought all you really end up with is a whole knot of
questions chasing each other’s tails because no one actually knows if any of our theories
about the universe are real or not.
It’s a bit like that Joni Mitchell song about the clouds, but more mathematical – we really
don’t know strings at all. Most people find that a bit off-putting, which is understandable.

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But perhaps the most important thing I learned about string theory is this: To a physicist,
everything is made up of strings. And, someday, that’s going to explain everything.
Everything in the whole universe. We’re all much longer than we are wide.
I guess, in that way, string theory does hold people on earth together with the dwarf stars,
because being made up of the same thing very nearly makes us the same.
And maybe if string theory can connect us with celestial objects several million light years
away it could even, someday, connect us with people.
The way other people think may be the only thing in the universe more confusing than
physics.

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Piper Whitehead
Year 13
Diocesan School for girls

Tauranga
 
Laura’s mum’s friend is wasted
she is slow-moving-glassy-eyed wasted
we are babysitting her daughter, Danielle
after, beside the milky, milky pool
tilted away from the many-splendoured street lamp
the stars are so pretty, very very pretty
and we are laughing laughing
Laura’s head drops right down
between the two wicker pool-chairs in the dark
ahhh!
I feel bad for Danielle, I say
Danielle, says Amy, who is Danielle?
and Laura and I laugh and laugh
and on the grass (which is so cool, very very cool)
I mould my clay thoughts
and push my brown fingers into the dirt
and the grass is beneath the stars
the next morning on the intercity bus
I look at the tattered edges of the Mount: stained
brick houses, yellowing lawns
sad and relentless
the air is scorched by the lenses of my sunnies
Danielle’s brother is at least 30
her father is fishing in Dubai
Laura’s mum’s husband
says her mum got pregnant with her on purpose
I leave my sunglasses on
even though the windows of the bus are tinted
we are still hours from Auckland
 

Antonia Smith
Year 12
Rangitoto College

Three views of the Rakaia
 
1
I swim up the snow-fed braided river of Rakaia.
Unstable shingle bed,
never still.
Glacier-fed,
silt the colour of spring melt.
I make my annual sea run.
Held in suspension but moving.
Never stopping.
Pain throbs
and pulses in my head.
Not a sharp pain,
more of a dull pounding of a hammer.
The roar of the shingle is reverberating,
my brain can’t process properly…
A pink lure catches my eye.
I am far too wise to take that bait.
 
2
I am a fisherman.
At the river mouth
I stand alone,
a solitary soul.
Knee deep in hope,
anticipating a tug on my pink lure.
It’s all about the waiting.
I cast above my head,
piercing the surface of the water.
The line dances.
I don’t know what is on the other end.
My imagination runs with the line.
I have a catch.
Catch and release, catch and release.
Until I find the one, the one
for my dinner.
The cobalt Rakaia swiftly moves beneath my feet.
 
3
Starting deep and swift.
Force off the mountains.
Getting wider, then separating into strands.
Braided on the Canterbury plains.
Peaceful yet deadly.
Sheltering fish,
riding rocks.
They pierce my skin with fishing lines, and hooks,
paying no attention to boundaries.
Twisting, turning and thundering,
my soul is the moving river,
my body is the riverbed.
I spit out a mouthful of fresh water into the sea.
The first ray of the morning sun tiptoes on the pebbles.
The dusk sleeps on the riverbed.
But I am always awake.
 

Millie Hulme
Year 13
Timaru Girls’ High

The PWF
 
when i told them about the Pretty White Friend they were
delighted and frightened. justifiably beguiled.
mother hush-hushes as i splash streaks of
salty sea things and smile.
for lost communication, beam –
for foreign shapes on tongues, where
i bask in jarred alfredo,
‘hope you am enjoying some dinners, dear’
over white china and silver cutlery,
her eyes will shudder
hands will flutter
mutter      mutter      m-u-t-t-e-r-e-d         mother’s
mental reassurances that our rice cooker is firmly
lodged under bed, and that the
wok on ceiling is taped securely
you grimaced i grinned we crept
to sail where we are subtle
(midnight giggles muffled)
with each others necks and
the moon floods my yellow banks and
mars your milky shores and
i slam the doors on deck and
nestle their whispers into seas that
‘i am worshipped as one of Them and
one third despised one third condemned’ –          please
Pretty White Friend, i smile, see
but some day i will wake up and i will scream.
 

Kassandra Wang
Year 12
St Cuthbert’s College

How much is too much for remembering?
 
How much is too much for remembering?
You know the grief when the river flow wiped off the rice paddies – all dead
The afternoon smoke flew away as they burned the rice stubble afterwards
There, the neighbour boy caught the fishes
shut them in a jar so his childhood couldn’t go too far
At the end of the day
Come back again to see the cobblestone path on a rainy day
follow the flute sound and run up the hill to the village
meet the old woman with a natural smile, no teeth,
seemed like she was waiting for her son to come back home from town
There’s too much to remember about the old days
The flower scent in the air,
cicadas rumbling on the trees,
the trees Grandpa planted that year
now laying buds in people’s hearts
Where was the innocence?
We are old enough to feel the loss
Stand in front of our shadows and command:
‘Don’t cry!
Numerous footprints will carry the promise.’
Begin to learn the mother tongue one more time
for more than a love of family, the old village, soil and sand
we feel the sense of belonging
In the memory of a beautiful dawn
there were heel marks on the mouldy bricks
Open the door,
light the cigarette,
ponder again: how much is too much for remembering?
 

Huyen Thu
Year 13
Wellington East Girls’ College

The Universe
 
we once had a conversation
about the universe
and i told you
i like to think
that space is infinite
that it has no beginning
middle
or end
but like most things
it has to end somewhere
in the same way
i like to think
that our love is infinite too
it has no beginning
middle
or end
but like most things
it had to end somewhere.
 

Mira Karunanidhi
Year 12
Queen Margaret College

It’s 2016
 
An hour earlier a woman shoves a girl
painted black, white, and purple
down with the butt of her flagpole
and with spit flying she screams
a history lesson: you’ve got a lot to learn.
It’s a community made up of the invisible
fighting to hold funeral marches.
Honey, you’re naïve for wanting to be visible,
acknowledged, recognized, and targeted.
Being seen got some of us attacked, left to die.
We don’t accept people like you.
They said, back in the day,
L was for the left over girls who couldn’t get a guy
G was for the goners pushed onto train tracks
B was for the backs stabbed by both sides
T was for –
Times have changed, the girl sneers,
and the letters crumble apart.
No funeral marches to wear black to,
it’s a rainbow, she points, all the colours and all the letters.
The woman scoffs,
you don’t belong here.
Grow up now, princess!
People like you don’t die.
We do.
Now, it’s Orlando, 12 days in.
Of all the colours, it’s red on the walls and the floor.
Today’s goners shot in the back and terrified.
Down the street a woman carries a flag,
its weight rests across her shoulder.
 

Zhouai Wang
Year 13
St Cuthbert’s College

Inside out
 
i cut my finger
today, quite by accident
sliced it open sliverquick
the piece of grin-glinting glass lying in the sink
the blood bloomed jubilant from
the curling furls of my fingertip
you’re alive! it dripped
look at all this oxygen
this steaming red-hot rush
slickening your veins,
making your bones hum
but a slip step breath goodbye and
we peel in half, peach-soft and dripping
splitting into pieces and pieces of
bone skin attic junk
a milk tooth, a ballet slipper, a memory wrinkling
what are we then, really?
it’s a delicate thing,
our paper paper skin
the touch of my finger to yours
a freckle graze,
slow and deafening
a current raging
so close to the surface
how easily we are
able to turn ourselves inside
out
 

Nina Richardson
Year 13
Samuel Marsden Collegiate School Karori

King Country
 
Deep within the King Country
Papatūānuku’s skin is an ocean of copper and gold
egg yolk and fish fingers –
Pollock on steroids in summer.
Shards of our mother’s broken bones break
like waves from the surface of the earth
forming barricades on which Tāne’s warriors stand
row upon row
they pull strength up through their roots
(as I pull my strength up through you)
their protective arms merging together like a great taniwha
or a tendril of smoke.
Deep within the King Country
we who are many become one again beneath Rangi’s chest
and sink back, children once more
into the soil from which we were moulded.
 

Eva Poland
Year 13
Wellington High School