Mystery, imagination and facts

I do love a fact. I love knowing the names of things: being able to recognise them again and give them meaning. Long contrails in a blue sky tell me the rain is coming; a May sky full of screaming tells me the swifts are back from Africa. It makes the world more familiar, more predictable: my safe little kingdom.

But facts are also the opposite of that. They make the world bigger. The vague green fuzz at the roadside resolves into detail and meaning: apple blossom imply cores tossed out of windows and unexpected roses suggest visiting finches, blackbirds or thrushes.

And then the detail and meaning unfurls into more questions: who threw the apple, was it did they hope it would grow, or just want to get rid of it? Did the bird have it's meal of rose hip in a garden or from a hedgerow? Does it nest in this same verge? Plenty to muse and wonder about now. It's as if the fact gives us a mental foothold in the fuzz - making it real enough to enter and explore.

We humans are prodigiously, thrillingly, ingenious, but still just creatures. Temporary ripples in evolution, here for a brief moment in the unrolling story of the universe. However much we enquire into the world, we can never understand Everything. Facts always come with a new little mystery or two in their arms. There's always more context, more relationship, more implications. The world is a bottomless lucky dip of things to know.

Isn't that great? We can utterly surrender to curiosity, seeking answers for ever and ever without any danger of running out of questions. And the world will still have plenty of mystery space for playing around with imagination.

Facts are the cake you can really have, and eat. And still leave room for madey-uppey dessert.