1. Touch
Trace a line along your arm. Shiver. Fine hairs rise up, pulling at your skin. The senses of finger touching arm and arm touched by finger cannot be separated. Yet the two have never made contact, cannot make contact. You can never touch anything. Until you redefine the word “touch”.
2. Wave/Particle Duality
Is light a wave or a particle?
[ This is the wrong question
The right question is What is light? ]
3. Curiosity
How could you not yearn to wrap your mind around a world where particles are smaller than the smallest they can be, and nothing behaves the way you know it should? How could your questions not flood into the vast spaces between the nucleus of every atom and its electron shells?
4. Electrons
[ Words pull out wrong notions…Electrons spin.
[ They behave as if they spin
but they don’t they can’t ]
Electrons are particles.
[ They are wavefunctionsdefining where you might
find them ]
Electrons jump from shell to shell.
[ This leap does not everpass through the in between ] ]
5. The Electromagnetic Interaction
… rest your head on my shoulder
… wrap both arms around me
… breathe a kiss on my lips
… it stops just short of touching
… the electrons of your molecules
… repel the electrons of mine
… inside atoms, between molecules
… the weight of the air on your skin
…
6. Now
As you breathe, question the air,
“How do you [ empty space made up of more empty space ]
push my lungs outwards?”
If you see a cat in a box, wonder,
“How does light [ something that cannot be imagined ]
project you into my mind?”
When you embrace your children, ask,
“How can we feel [ when we can never touch ]
each other’s warmth?”