Duality

05/05/2010

I am and I am not.
I am and we are.

A zen master, observing a waterfall, said:
We are all part of the stream.
When we pass over the lip of a cliff,
we separate into droplets.
These are our lives: individual, separate,
distinct.
At the end, we rejoin the stream.
That brief moment of existence
as individuals
is an anomaly, an illusion,
an artifact of semantics.
In truth, we are, and always have been
the stream.

We are and we are not.
I was not and I am.

A solitary electron, passing through a tiny hole,
behaves, not like a particle, but like a wave.
If there are two electrons,
passing through two parallel slits,
they interact like ripples in a pond
from two identical drops,
overlapping, intersecting, interfering.
Electrons act like waves until struck
by a photon - in fact,
until they are observed.
The act of observation collapses them,
pins them down, reduces them to mere points
instead of endless, expanding
possibilities.
This is called wave-particle duality.
It drives physicists mad.

They are. We are. I am.
I was. I will be.

People say, plan as though you'll live forever.
Live each day like it's your last.
Both are true cases.
You will not be tomorrow
the person you are now.
The self, reading this poem,
in this precise moment
expands outward in time,
unspooling twine through every branch
of time's unfolding labyrinth.
Along this path, you live.
Another path, you die.
An infinity of choices and outcomes,
all yours until you stop to look
and collapse again into your present.
Everything that you can be
you already are.

You are. I am. We.

We pass through the tiny slit of this moment.
My wave form reaches out, touches yours.
My existence is part of yours, you are part
of mine, we interfere and combine.
Which part of you is me?
Where am I in you? Don't look -
if we stop to think, to observe,
we'll collapse back into ourselves,
side by side but separate,
solitary, self-contained.

Or is identity illusion,
formed by a flash of light,
a shadow on the cave wall,
when the light fades,
and no one is looking?

I am you. You are me.
We have always been the stream.