Free Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman Page B

origin.
    Some people delight in isolation. They argue that their city is the grandest of cities, so why would they want communion with other cities. What silk could be softer than the silk from their own factories? What cows could be stronger than the cows in their own pastures? What watches could be finer than the watches in their own shops? Such people stand on their balconies at morning, as the sun rises over the mountains, and never look past the outskirts of town.
    Others want contact. They endlessly question the rare traveler who wanders into their city, ask him about places he has been, ask him about the color of other sunsets, the height of people and animals, the languages spoken, the customs of courtship, inventions. In time, one of the curious sets out to see for himself, leaves his city to explore other cities, becomes a traveler. He never returns.
    This world of the locality of time, this world of isolation yields a rich variety of life. For without the blending of cities, life can develop in a thousand different ways. In one city, people may live together closely, in another far apart. In one city, people may dress modestly, in another they may wear no clothes at all. In one city, people may mourn the death of enemies, in another they may have neither enemies nor friends. In one city, people may walk, in another they may ride in vehicles of strange invention. Such variety and more exists in regions only one hundred kilometers apart. Just beyond a mountain, just beyond a river lies a different life. Yet these lives do not speak to each other. These lives do not share. These lives do not nurture each other. The abundances caused by isolation are stifled by the same isolation.

• 22 June 1905
    It is graduation day at Agassiz Gymnasium. One hundred twenty-nine boys in white shirts and brown ties stand on marble steps and fidget in the sun while the headmaster reads out their names. On the front lawn, parents and relatives listen halfheartedly, stare at the ground, doze in their chairs. The valedictorian delivers his address in a monotone. He smiles weakly when handed his medal and drops it in a bush after the ceremony. No one congratulates him. The boys, their mothers, fathers, sisters walk listlessly to houses on Amthausgasse andAarstrasse, or to the waiting benches near the Bahnhofplatz, sit after the noon meal, play cards to pass time, nap. Dress clothes are folded and put away for another occasion. At the end of the summer, some of the boys go to university in Berne or in Zürich, some work in their fathers’ businesses, some travel to Germany or France in search of a job. These passages take place indifferently, mechanically, like the back-and-forth swing of a pendulum, like a chess game in which each move is forced. For in this world, the future is fixed.
    This is a world in which time is not fluid, parting to make way for events. Instead, time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past. Every action, every thought, every breath of wind, every flight of birds is completely determined, forever.
    In the performing hall of the Stadttheater, a ballerina moves across the stage and takes to the air. She hangs for a moment and then alights on the floor.
Saut, batterie, saut
. Legs cross and flutter, arms unfold into an open arch. Now she prepares for a
pirouette
, right leg moving back to fourth position, pushing off on one foot, arms coming in to speed the turn. She is precision. She is a clock. In her mind, while she dances, she thinks she should have floated a little on one leap, but she cannotfloat because her movements are not hers. Every interaction of her body with floor or with space is predetermined to a billionth of an inch. There is no room to float. To float would indicate a slight uncertainty, while there is no uncertainty. And so she moves around the stage with clocklike inevitability, makes no unexpected leaps or dares, touches