Contemplating a Black Hole At Brookhaven Labs

I like to take a lot of risks. I enter a state of bliss when my speedometer tops 90 mph. I have a known appetite for exotic sense-deranging substances. I work for the circus. I’ve fraternized and associated with members of the criminal element in our society. I’m a card-carrying Satanist. A certain amount of risk is as necessary to me as the four California figs I eat every morning. Risk keeps me regular.

1999 was a boom year for eschatology. My ratty little paperback dictionary defines eschatology as "religious doctrine concerning final events," but it’s become much broader than that. Eschatologies abound these days: UFO scenarios, New Year’s Eve, the New World Order, polar-shift freaks, mutant rainforest viruses, Preston Nichols’ Montauk ravings, an end-of-the-world package for every conceivable taste. It’s just another commodity in the cultural shopping mall run amok described by Guy DeBord in his prophetic 1967 book The Society of The Spectacle. DeBord shot himself through the heart a couple of years ago, or so the cops in France say. Who knows what really happened?

I run with an interesting and diverse bunch, none of whom are in the least bit boring. I am addicted to novelty. I hear a lot of weird shit. If a UFO touches down in Kokomo, IN, or some tinker develops a free-energy device in Reno, NV, I’m going to hear about it. Back in July I started hearing little fragments about an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, bits and pieces from various fringe sources and a clipping from the Sunday Times of London about a new supercollider and a project that might create a black hole. By Thanksgiving, it seemed like every doom ’n’ gloom fan on the weird science circuit was babbling about RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

I can’t resist the lure of a new eschaton, especially one so quaint as to be centered on Long Island. I called Brookhaven and spoke with Pete Genzer of their Media & Communications Group. He sent me a nifty packet of photos and information about the RHIC project and suggested that I come out for a visit.

Whimsy is very important to me. I refuse to engage with people who are incapable of being whimsical. I called Brookhaven and told them I’d be dropping by on Tues., Dec. 21. I couldn’t really nail down a time because I had no idea how I’d be getting there or how long it would take. I spent the last few days before my Brookhaven adventure hauling around really bizarre props, scenery and costumes for Eliot Feld’s BalletTech with my buddy Nick. Nick and I have been hauling Eliot’s weird assemblages of stuff around off and on for years together, but Nick is leaving the roadie life to go back to school. He’s majoring in theology, with the intent of becoming an Episcopalian priest. More