A hole isn’t really nothing, but rather shows you nothing. This is an important distinction. You see it by the shadow it casts. Before even their shadows were seen, black holes were imagined, were what the researcher David Burrows has called ‘a discovery of the mind’[1]. In 1783, a country parson and amateur scientist named John Michell conducted a thought experiment, a hypothetical method of determining the mass of a star. In following his thought to its logical conclusion, he determined that the escape velocity for a star more than five hundred times the mass of the sun would be greater than the speed of light, and that therefore the body would be invisible to the outside world. While his method of measurement would not have worked (relying as it did on outdated theories of light’s materiality), he had in effect described a black hole—an idea that went much unremarked upon at the time, being so far outside the bounds of knowledge. Michell (who studied at Cambridge and lived near Leeds for much of his life) was not in the practice of self-promotion or even development of his own ideas, and so he remains somewhat obscure, even in our histories of holes. Another prediction of his: that the invisible bodies he described might be detectable by the movement of stars around them[2]. Michell had observed the distribution of stars in the night sky, claiming the ubiquity of paired stars, thus predicting binary stars. He in fact thought it possible to detect his proto-black holes, these ‘dark stars’, by twin stars in orbit around them[3]. Their twins give them away.

*

Shortly after the hole in my ceiling was patched up, I moved, and a week later K came to see me. We sat in my living room, side by side, staring out the window. The light was good, but the view was into facing neighbours’ kitchens, bedrooms, home offices, and hallways. From where we were sitting, we could see ten, maybe twenty of them. And nobody was looking at us, as though our side of the street didn’t exist in the same way that their side did. I mentioned that my bedroom window had no curtains, that I would need to get some. He said that was a good thing, to let the light in. I reminded him that I had trouble sleeping.

When I moved into the new flat, the landlord pointed out a water stain on the bedroom ceiling. She assured me that the leak had been fixed, that it was merely a superficial issue at this stage, and I believed her. But I thought it strange, knew I had carried some things with me in the move. 

*

The new dining room window was large and overlooked a tall tree, putting me level with the top branches. One morning I watched a bird building a nest. I thought it was a magpie but magpies don’t build their own nests—they steal others’, I thought. A black and white bird of some sort was diligently carrying twigs to the top and laying them over one another, an intricate and strong lattice formation. I smoked a cigarette while I watched the bird, thinking it was what I needed, but it didn’t make me feel any better. A lack replaced with a new lack is the structure of desire, but it’s possible to know something on an intellectual level and feel quite differently about it. Every part of me tended towards the moment I’d light the cigarette, inhale the first draw. Then, nothing. Each breath more disappointing than the last, but something kept me smoking. The idea that it could be satisfying, could fulfil something I was lacking. The idea was more powerful than any physical revulsion. No, revulsion is too strong. Discontent is more accurate.

I thought about how I needed to quit smoking.

*

It was weeks before I realised my mistake about the magpie. That cuckoos are the nest thieves. Still, one for sorrow, two for joy. The bird was a malleable message carrier.

Sometimes I am not sure if once created, desire can be destroyed. If there is moving on from an addiction, or only suppression. Perhaps what changes is the discipline. You stop giving into the want. After a while, it might not even feel like want anymore. If you can do away completely with exposure, the forgetting is easier. But in reality, things are rarely so clear-cut.

The constant disappointment of smoking was replaced with constant want, but I suppose that was better, in the long run.

*

I heard on the news that explosive sinkholes are appearing in the Russian Arctic, in the Yamal and Gyda peninsulas: seventeen (that we know of) since 2013. A result of climate change, but the finer details of which are a mystery. The explosions are caused by methane gas blowing ice and rock away from the point of impact, forming huge circular craters in the desolate landscape. Scientists are interested in discovering their secrets. So far, they have not been forthcoming. Many have been found by accident, by helicopters passing over, or reindeer herders on the ground.

For the first time, drone photography has been used not only to provide expansive aerial views of the pockmarked landscape, but they are sending them deep into the craters too, to image the unseen cavity where the methane has collected. The latest hole is thirty metres deep: imagine three buses end to end, says the news. Three times they almost lost the drone. Events emerge in threes. They don’t know where the methane comes from. A bubble of earth forms on the surface before the explosion occurs. These are processes that have not been visible before.

Using satellite imagery, researchers can now pinpoint a narrow date range during which the crater(s) formed. But it is not known when the next one will occur.

*

I decided to throw a housewarming party, despite being in no way the kind of person who would want to invite multiple people into their home. My friend helped me to plan and to invite people. K was invited, and many people I did not know well. My friend assured me that what I wanted was bodies in the room. That didn’t sound like what I wanted, but I was not the experienced party planner in this situation.

I hid in my room for most of the party, after a brief period of greeting people. Because I did not know many of the people there very well, it mattered little to them whether I was present or not. The crowd displayed a lurid energy. They seemed to delight in making as much noise as possible, in stamping their feet and roaring with laughter. I briefly came out of my room to realise K had arrived with a group of people. Why did he feel so comfortable in my home to enjoy this party with the huge number of friends he had brought? 

Back in my room I thought of the events that had led to this moment. Of the ways I had seemingly invited this kind of uncomplicated mirth for others which had pushed me into a corner. But was I not enjoying myself? Was this not exactly the position I had eked out, meticulously cutting off all other avenues?

Every now and again I would emerge to walk in circles around the open plan of the flat and drink a beer. I suppose people thought I was mingling. They certainly didn’t seem to think anything unusual in my movements, or to react outwardly at all in fact.

K was enjoying the company of his friends, whom he had brought to my party from some unknown location. He did not notice anything unusual in my movements or react to my presence at all in fact. Suppose I had become invisible. What a coincidence that would have been.

[NOTES]

[1] David Burrows, ‘Science-Fictioning Singularities’, talk for SoAH Research Presents: DIAGRAM, The Royal College of Art, online, 29 February, 2021.

[2] Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson (editors), Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge, New York: New Press, 2000.

[3] ‘November 27, 1783: John Michell anticipates black holes’, APS News 18: 10, 2009.

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Holes is available now from Ma Bibliothèque. You can order a copy here.

Hilary White is a writer and researcher. She is currently an Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Maynooth University, working at the intersections of experimental poetry and sleep science, on a project called Forms of Sleep: Literary Experiments in Somnolence. Various forms of writing have been published in The Yellow Paper, RTÉ Brainstorm, Corridor8, MAP, Banshee, zarf and The Stinging Fly.