Detergent Molecules

On Christmas night I met this strange animated very tall scientist at Relax. It was in the Spanish town of Ronda, the home of bullfighting in the country.

Alex was a physicist working with molecular structures in Liverpool. He created simulated computer programs for a detergent company. His task was to see how and which molecules were attracted to dirt and which ones liked water.

It was as simple as that, his work. He was paid to have fun.

“Every couple of years I shift around,” Alex said in his drunken state of mind. “Well this looks interesting, I say to myself. I’ll try this for a couple of years.”

His height over the world was frightening, at first. His companion, another physicist from Germany was silent night.

I listened. My work was writer, storyteller, a hunter gather of material. The Art of Hanging Out.

High talkative Alex said, when he knew the truth, “Well then I’ll give you something for your book,” and he did.

“I am from Canada, my family is from Hungry, I spent six years in Athens, Georgia, then in Germany and now I am in England. The cord connecting me to my past has been cut, severed. I am just floating around having fun. Yes, I just end up in these most fascinating places having fun. I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing two or three years from now. I just ended up in a place doing my scientific work and they pay me. It’s amazing! I think I am becoming less left-brained over time. I will tell you something that happened to me recently. I discovered music. I discovered the drums. I found out when you play the drums you cannot be analytical about it, you have to be the drum.”

He shouted in Relax. The place was packed and we were at the end of the bar. Spanish language competed with English, pounding music, laughter and colliding glasses in celebrations.

He was in the spotlight. He was letting it all out. He was drinking and free. He and his silent friend were on a three week holiday. His friend had driven down from Frankfurt and they met in Barcelona. Now they were in Andalucia and hoped to go to Morocco.

He was anxious. “My friend’s passport expires in six months and we don’t know if they will let him in. We want to go in at Cueta, travel to Fez, Meknez, spend new year’s eve in Marrakech, then go over the Atlas mountains, swing through the Sahara and back north.”

“What happens if you can’t get in?”

He laughed from a great height and threw out massive hands, the hands of a scientist with well manicured nails.

“Then we’ll just go where we feel like it, following old roads, seeing where they go, like we did today through white villages named Benacoz and Arcos. We have no plans other than trying to get into Morocco. Neither of us have been there. We don’t know it.”

“I know it. I was there on 9/11 for two months before coming here.”

“Really?” Alex shouted, combining a question with an exclamation that echoed through festivities. “What is it like? I really want to know.”

“It’s a strange fascinating place. It will be a shock for you and your friend for a couple of days and then you will get used to the rhythm of the place, how to handle the hustlers, how to see in the light. Eight hours seems like 24.”

“Really?” he shouted towering over his listener.

“Yes. Really. You will find a new world of experience there. The people are kind and very hospitable. It may be overwhelming.”

“I will tell them I am from Canada, even though I spent six years in Georgia. It took me six years to figure out how the Americans think, and it was very strange. They live in their own little world. They don’t see out. I would talk them and the frequency passed right through their transparent selves.”

“I know what you mean,” I said rolling a cigarette. “I’ve been out of the country since September 1st. I jumped through a window.”

“Really!” was Alex’s favorite word. He ordered another beer. He was a tall brilliant kid in a new world. His excitement at this realization was absurd, revealing, scary, funny and entirely full of repressed energy. He grabbed his space as people poured past them to reach bathrooms.

He poured out his words. “Wow,” he said looking around Relax. “This is really amazing. Why is this place so interesting and so full of people?”

“There’s an excellent Spanish language course at Mondragon Palace. Students from all over the world come here for intensive 3-4 month classes. The city dates back to Roman and Moorish times, the weather is good year round, and the social scene is nonstop. Plenty of recreational drugs are available. For medicinal purposes only, of course. It’s a good place for people to be.”

Alex laughed. “Well I’d be interested in the medicinal properties of course. Do you live here?”

“No, I live, write and climb in a mountain pueblo 25 kilometers from here in the Sierras. It’s called Grazalema. The Romans established a village there on their way to Seville. Their name for the village was Lacilbula. I’m down for a couple of days to see friends for the holidays.”

“Really? I never heard of it. We drove around today to a lot of places, just following the road. It was really great. This is a wonderful place.” He looked over all the Spanish women and men talking and drinking at tables along orange walls in candlelight.

“Hey, he said, “I’ll give you something for your book. Then I’ll be in it.”

“Ok."

“You won’t believe it but I work with a multinational company, in one of their labs in Liverpool. I use computer programs to create and analyze various molecules in their detergent.”

“Detergent?”

“Detergent. This is how it works. Some molecules are attracted to dirt. They adhere to it, they seek it out. Others like water. So, I assemble all these various atoms and molecules and see what they do. I introduce them to the materials and see how they react.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yes, and I get paid to have fun. They pay me to create these experiments.”

“So, it’s really like you are an artist using the computer to create a canvas, a painting of these molecules.”

“Exactly!” Alex yelled from his height, his enthusiasm blasting over the hip hop rap bass beat. “You can put that in your book.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Readers may find your work interesting. I used to work in an area where there was a nuclear reactor and I knew a lot of physicists there. They were working on nuclear questions, some on hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I’ve never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Yeah it’s pretty cool. And now we’re here. Did you know,” he said, “that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particles of atoms, a very small part, is life and then inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.” He laughed long and loud.

“The amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it. The natural law is for things to get messy. That’s why people clean, to rearrange the molecules in some form of order. They think they are in control of it. They are afraid of the change. Things happen which are outside their control or plans of the creator. It expands the evolutionary process.”

“So,” I said. “The world constructed of stories includes atoms. Interesting. I took a statistics class once, and while I wasn’t very good in statistics I learned one thing from the teacher.”

“What’s that?”

“Any individual or system will do whatever is necessary to perpetuate and sustain itself.”

“That’s it!” Alex yelled. “That’s a pure definition of how the world works. That’s the exact answer.”