As best I recall, I wrote this about 25 years ago, around age 55. I guess it’s a millennial relic, then. It was posted on Ratburger & maybe Scanalyst as well. I dug it out and find it is one of two things I’ve written which remain `a propos with age. It still describes my thoughts and longings as well as - regardless of how much we know about the nature of reality - the growing sense of mystery underlying it all. Thus I subject you to it - once again for the long-timers.
A MEDITATION ON QUARKS, SENTIENT BEINGS
AND COSMIC ARCHITECTURE:
SUPERSYMMETRY ON WRY
On the occasion of a trip
To see my waning dad,
But a Planck’s length (relatively speaking)
From the locus of my conception
(In Earth co-ordinates),
I came to wonder:
How is it that the consciousness
That is me
Coalesced - by God - as it surely must have,
In these dimensions, at least
From leptons, bosons, and the ether?
What magic made it me, and not some other?
As my own observer,
My esse appears quantal,
Discrete.
And yet it partakes
Of a singularity,
Holding ever so tightly to
Its evr’y bit of ineffable matter and energy,
Lest it dis-integrate
And cease to be,
Leaving not so much
As a ripple in space-time,
As a memorial to its existence -
Much less its meaning.
And yet this quantal self,
In-formed, as it is
With a force
Masquerading now as gravity,
Then as electromagnetism, and yet again as
A strong nuclear force,
Yearns for continuum.
It reaches across quarks,
The space between shared glances,
And that between galaxies,
Wondering and hoping for
The resigned and wistful reply:
I, too, am here,
Separate.
And I also long to know and touch you;
To bask in the warmth
Of your brief existence,
Which mirrors my own.