WEBVTT

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Now we have to wait
for the handout.

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OK.

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All right.

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There is more to say
before I start reading it,

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so I guess I could go on.

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"As a child I tried to
have experiential knowledge

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of religious doctrine.

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Never wanted to
give up and back I

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tied to somehow ground abstract
physics in human psychology.

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I do so feeling that the
two are somehow incompatible

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and that they will clash
in tragicomic ways."

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So here's the poem.

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"Back."

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"The teacher said two
mirror images could

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come into being by
borrowing from zero,

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but only if they agreed
to cancel one another out.

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We followed from inert matter by
offering to eat each other up.

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What sort of place is existence?

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Since we can come into it.

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A point coincides,
it has no dimension.

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Some say matters really
energy and energy

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is force of law and
law is just tautology.

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We were taught to have faces
by a face looking back."

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Back begins in what seems to
be the voice of an algebra

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teacher discussing equations.

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Beneath this, though, is the
theory of the quantum vacuum

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in which supposedly virtual
particles and their mirror

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image antiparticles
constantly pop into existence

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and then annihilate one another.

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How can we understand this?

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By imitation?

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Living being survived
by canceling out,

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by gobbling one
another up, by turns.

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I as the speaker
in the poem offered

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this imperfect and grotesque
metaphor as a tribute

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to particle physics.

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Imitation is the sincerest
form of flattery.

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Formula seemed to express
physical laws by putting

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an equal sign between things.

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But what is the single thing?

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Does it come down to
the point particle

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which is said to somehow
exist without any dimension?

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That's true by the way.

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That is what they say.

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In the third
section of the poem,

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the mirror image particle has
become the Lacanian mirror

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stage in the
child's development.

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I wonder if we exist only as
paired, entangled, tautological

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images, do we exist at all?

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Of course, not all my
poems call on science.

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But in recent years a
surprising number have.

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I think this is because
contemporary science not only

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gives us provocative
things to imagine,

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but also leaves us with
more questions than answers.

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