RIVER CITY JOURNAL: BIG QUESTIONS AND MODERN ART: WHO KNOWS WHICH IS WHICH?

I suppose it's nice to know there are galaxies beyond the Milky Way, but I haven't figured out why I need to know that.

Don't panic, but I still think there are a lot of Big Questions out there we don't have a clue about, even if we think we do.

For the umpteenth time, Time magazine tried again this week to explain both the Big Bang theory and Einstein's theory of relativity.

To be real honest, I didn't understand a word they said.

I've tried. Goodness knows I've tried. But every time I try to wrap my measly brain around a concept like infinity or the speed of light, I get sick to my stomach.

For every answer the brilliant experts give us, I only have more questions.

Take Stephen Hawking, the British professor who has become so popular in his efforts to explain what I consider to be the unexplainable. He wrote this book, "A Brief History of Time," which claimed to explain how it -- whatever "it" is -- all started in language that could be understood by those of us who aren't rocket scientists. In other words, the book was, supposedly, aimed at dumb slobs like me who just don't get it.

Someone gave me the book, probably one of my sons. I read the first page. I had to look up 67 words in the dictionary. I didn't read the second page.

My sons have read the entire book. They called it brilliant and illuminating. I can only attribute this to the fact that our sons are a lot smarter than we are. A whole lot smarter.

I think that's because they grew up watching TV from about two feet away. I think TV radiation altered their brains. How else can you explain 7-year-olds who can get your home computer to talk to that blasted printer? And it's the only satisfactory explanation I have for why your children can set the VCR but you can't. Or why they can get the CD player to work. Good grief! I can't even open those thin plastic boxes that hold CDs. I have to call San Antonio or Boston and pray to God one of my sons will answer the phone so I can ask, "Where do I put my thumbs on these dang CD containers?"

You want to know how smart our sons are? They can reset the clocks in both our cars without looking at the owner's manual. That's smart.

It dawned on me this week, as I once again struggled with Time's effort to push me into the Big Question abyss, that perhaps I've been right all along: There really aren't any good answers for questions like "Where, exactly, is heaven?" or "If time started with the Big Bang, how did they know when to eat lunch before that?"

Let me use an analogy. By the way, I learned the word "analogy" when I had to look it up that time I read Hawking's book. So I'm not trying to be a stuffed shirt when I use "analogy" and try to make it look like it's an ordinary, everyday word. It's not. But now that I've looked it up, I think I ought to get my money's worth and use it once in a while.

Anyway, here's my analogy. I think people accept some of these really bizarre ideas from folks like Hawking and Einstein because they're afraid they'll look dumb, just like art-lover wannabes say they like modern art when they don't have the foggiest idea what's on the canvas.

There. I've said it.

I think most modern art is bunk. I don't care how dumb anyone thinks I am.

Take the modern-art section of the art museum in St. Louis. I wouldn't give you a quarter for the whole mess. Where would I put it? Use it as siding for the storage shed I want to put under the magnolia, an idea that makes a crazed look appear in my wife's eyes?

Every time I see that big room in the art museum's modern-art area with all the broken glass on the floor, I say loudly -- hoping some janitor will take the hint -- "When are they going to clean up this mess? Someone's going to get hurt and sue the museum for everything it has."

Then I remember, of course, that what the museum has is a lot of two-bit modern art.

I happen to think it's OK for an artist to paint something I recognize. That doesn't happen much with modern art. Most of the time I read the little placard next to a piece of modern art, and it says something like "No. 73." You know what that means? It means the artist did 72 things worse than this before the museum decided to act like it understood modern art.

That's scary.

I was downright shocked the last time we visited the St. Louis museum. There among the art that looks mostly like a test pattern for some drug-crazed cable channel was what looked to me like a photograph of a lovely young girl who, it turned out, was the artist's daughter. It looked like one of those wonderful Kodak moments, a girl with glowing hair turning away from the photographer whose picture captures the lithe gestures of youth. I wondered why the museum would put such a wonderful photo in with all the modern art.

Turns out it wasn't a photograph. It was a painting. A painting! There it was, the only piece of modern art I ever saw that I understood. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I shouted, "Golly gee whiz!" One of the museum guards came over and stood by me with his hands poised to draw his walkie-talkie in case things really got out of hand.

My fondest wish is that some day I'll open up Time magazine and read an article about how we know a galaxy is really 100 million light-years away, which means it probably isn't there any more, and I'll shout, "Golly gee whiz!"

I'm not holding my breath.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.