Matthew Mosca | The Endless Universe
DECEMBER 3, 2019
It is dark on the outskirts of Chapel Hill. The summer night breathes deep, weighing warm and heavy over the trees, the fields, the empty one-lane roads that snake through the countryside. We lie in our friend’s backyard, music playing low, cozy under blankets and the sky.
Late August. The Perseids meteor shower is peaking. Even now, more than four years later, I remember this night clearly. I feel very small, the Milky Way unraveling above us, the universe, hung silent and still and vast, against an endless backdrop of stars.
This, Matthew tells me, is one of his fondest high school memories. Looking up at the stars always makes you think about things, about existence. I think about that night and remember—we were just very present together. I think it says something about the types of friends we had, and the relationships we had with each other.
I, too, look back on this memory with only happiness. I don’t think it’s possible for me to overstate the effect of my friends and their love on my high school experience; and so I am excited to interview Matthew, six years after it all began. Those six years are a whirlwind—of lunch periods together on the floor of our favorite English classroom, and brutal track workouts in 90-degree heat, and singing a cappella, and even traveling Spain during the spring of our junior year. Through everything, Matthew has come to be one of the people who knows me best.
I meet him in tenth grade, on the first day of school. We are the only two sophomores in our Spanish class. He sits next to me, and I remember feeling quite intimidated by his command of grammar and syntax. Later, I will learn that his skill comes from a background of elementary-school Spanish immersion programs, a natural proclivity for the language, and a lot of hard work.
Matthew is one of the most hardworking people that I have ever met. I have always been impressed by his drive and his diligence. He tells me that much of this motivation is self-generated, an innate pressure to do his best. I don’t want to look back and regret not trying hard enough or not pursuing something I thought was awesome. I want to make sure that I’m making the most of things. Back in high school, we would sit in the commons during our shared free period and I would bother him while he tried to finish his homework (sorry, Matthew). It was particularly frustrating to watch him maintain focus despite my best efforts to be a distraction.
I value working hard, he tells me. I want to be proud of having done everything I can. It’s something very attached to who I am.
Yet he is also curious, fascinated by big ideas and new concepts, topics that range from writing and philosophy to space and time. When he was young, maybe ten, he drafted more than forty pages of an original fantasy novel, just because he could. I have always wanted to write a book, and I’m going to write a book. These years of friendship have taught me that a conversation with Matthew can jump from subject to subject faster than I can keep up. It is one of my favorite things about him; although we only see each other a couple times a year now—we attend college coasts apart—I can always count on his company to refresh and inspire me.
A couple summers ago, we met up at the same café where, incidentally, I interviewed him in preparation for this very blog post. We were exchanging books then; he wanted to pass on some postmodernist novels that he had read in senior-year English class. I remember sitting silent in the heavy July heat, the gentle buzz of lunchtime chatter around us, paging through the notes and markings he had left littered throughout White Noise and City of Glass. I remember, a few days after, receiving a text from him with a picture attached: I just bought, like, ten new books. I went to the bookstore and I couldn’t help myself.
As college progressed, I watched him adjust to life at Duke, find new friends and happiness in his classes, and anguish over his choice of major. Ultimately, he decided on computer science, narrowing down probably seven or eight options over the span of two years. But this has not limited his pursuit of stories and ideas, of the endless opportunities that life has to offer. When I ask him the question I ask everyone—if you could do anything in the world, what would it be?—he gives me the most typically Matthew answer I could expect. One option would be a stand-up comedian and writer. I also think writing for shows or movies would be really fun. And I always thought the idea of being a theoretical physicist would be cool—I like space stuff, and trying to figure out space. So I would be, like, a theoretical physicist and then an astronaut. I’d get to think about things, and I’ve always liked puzzling over physics and philosophy. In a single response, a dozen possibilities.
Quite honestly, I have known Matthew for long enough that I don’t think I will ever understand what’s going on in his head. But to him, that experience is a fundamental part of being human—each of us only knows our own thoughts, and that links us in some deep and essential way. We’re similar in the way that we experience the world. I can only see what I think—I can’t see what you’re thinking or what anyone else is thinking, and so it creates a lot of self-consciousness. We’re all self-conscious of the way we exist in the world with other people, and what that means is that we are all trying to find our place in things. And in that way, I think we’re all sort of the same.
The funniest part of the whole thing is that he has been contemplating this idea—a rather complex rumination on self-consciousness and how it feeds identity and sense of purpose—since he was eight years old. I remember asking my mom about this in the car when I lived in Pennsylvania—I was in, like, third grade or something. He laughs. She was probably so weirded out.
It is this particular combination of philosophical thinking, self-reflection, and gentle humor that has characterized my friendship with Matthew, and that colors my memories with him, however recent or far-off they may be. How far we have come from that first day of tenth grade, Mateo and Verónica among a sea of juniors. How far we have come since that night in August, the meteors soaring above us, silent and splendid and free. How far we still have yet to go. But in these six years, and in every day since, I have learned to have faith. Wherever the future may find us, Matthew will always be pushing on, always questioning, always wanting to know more. I believe that curiosity and understanding will serve him well, carrying him forward into the unknown.
Photo courtesy of Matthew Mosca
