I talked to a crazy in the park today. She told me my liberal arts degree is bullshit, that the only things I should care about knowing are physical realities. She asked me what I knew. I told her 'very little.' She asked me what I wanted to know. I told her 'everything.'

For the next 30 minutes she had me take notes as she delivered an impromptu lecture. Today's topic was astronomy. We covered light years, literally. The solar system and the age of the universe and the layers of the sun. Most what she told me was absolutely right. She had just come from the library where she had copied it all (and the corresponding illustrations) perfectly (and in very impressive handwriting).

Not all of it was right though. She told me there were two suns. The first one was directly above Africa, perpendicular in fact. She said she discovered the other one and it shines directly above the empire state building. All of this I copied down and also that mankind's salvation lay in the harnessing of atomic power.

I left her there on the bench to go attend another lecture, one where the professor doesn't know my name and where half the class is plugged into their iphones the entire time. I told her I'd come back afterwards and repay the favor with whatever it is I learn. All of class I sat there zoning out the 'liberal arts bullshit' and instead prepared notes (with diagrams) on evolution, whatever I could remember from high school biology. I felt genuinely excited to pass it along to this crazy in the park.

When class was over I went back to the bench but she wasn't there. I sat down and waited. I looked over my notes, the ones she gave me and the ones I'd prepared. I looked at the sun, her sun, and imagined the empire state building stabbing it in its very core. Was she right? I wondered. (not about the second sun, that was the crazy speaking) Does mankind's salvation really lie in nuclear power? Is nothing in this world important except for what I can physically grab in my hand? Maybe I'll drop out of school and hold up in the library, copying data and facts out of old scientific americas. (The illustrations too).

Right then a pigeon shat on my head.

I left the evolution notes under a rock on the bench and made off, head covered in pigeon goo.

Maybe it is all pigeonshit, I thought, but at least somehow it's empowered me to give absolute atomic importance to anything, to find mankind's salvation hidden in everything, to make a crazy into a sun.