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Friday, January 24, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:09 AM:
Got bored in the bookstore today and started reading Deepak Chopra'sHow to Know God: The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries. (You should read it too, maybe by buying it at the link and helping out the TurkeyBlog rather than messing up a bookstore copy.) The book suggests that the way we related to God, and indeed the world, is based on the different ways our brains process information and which ones dominate. In the midst of the discussion, Chopra notes that snails take three seconds to process neural events, so if one is looking at an apple and you grab it, it will appear to the snail that the apple just vanished into thin air. Chopra says the same is true of us, with all our fuzzy little quantic probabilities buzzing about and us thinking we see reality rather than what's in between the blinks during which reality's course is decided. The discussion is quite interesting and whether one buys any of it or not it makes for a good read. It also inspired this poem, which I like to think Billy Collins might have written if he had a lot less talent and a lot more time on his hands:
Too Deepak For Me
We are like the frames of a movie,
he said,
Our little quanta blinking on and off so fast
We don't even notice
When we're off.
I wonder,
Do we disappear all at once
Then reappear just as fast
All at once?
Do our little quanta
Blink off and on in alternating fashion
Like gaudy Christmas lights?
Or do parts of us blink on
While others blink off?
Arm gone, arm back, but
Whoops!
Nose gone, nose back
On the opposite cadence.
I think this is it
For my toe was nowhere near the hearth
Before I stubbed it this morning
And yet with that sudden jolt
I looked down and there it was.
Now you know why I translate Victor Hugo's poetry at the Hugo Pages rather than writing my own.
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