The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

Your choice as a human may seem stark: to stay or to go, to stick or strike out, to fix or to try and break free. You limit yourselves to two dumb inertias: a state of rest or perpetual motion. But there is a third way, a moral you stumbled on, thinking it fatal, a flaw. To err is human, you say with great sadness. But we thinful singers give praise! To the drift, the diversion, that motion of motions! Obey the law of the flaw! If errare humanum est indeed, then it follows that si fallor, sum. As the Gnostic Gospel of Philip opined: ‘The world came about through an error.’ He probably meant God, but for good old Lucretius, this was a matter of matter. When atoms plummet like rain through the void, they deflect – oh, ever so slightly, just enough that their paths divert. From this swerve, called the clinamen, come collision and cluster, both the binding and fleeing of matter.