This collection is focused on the relationship between all things. I firmly hold the belief that we are all connected as people, and generally across the universe this holds true. While at times random and at times predictable, Geometry offers a good framework to model this: I begin at the smallest level, with quarks and mesons, and move to atoms, molecules, neurons, and into the sound and light that surrounds us. Finally, I step outside our planet into orbit, and the universe. While the effects of our impact on each other might differ, the constant of some relation remains.
I began thinking about this as I explored the impact people can have on each other. And, the charged nature and polarity of contemporary society. And so I landed on thinking about geometry as a framework for relationships. While we might think that something so static is fixed it contains seemingly oppositional realities. And so , the way our world is built at every level offers insights into the multiplicities our world is built upon, if we can just see them, and begin to see ourselves and each other in the same way .
Subatomic Entanglements
Stereo Love
Sugarplum Dreams
Symphonic Relations
Bounce Back
A Cosmic Twist
This series was a great one to research and write about. After some endings in my personal and professional life, I began to reflect on the ways the nation and the world reflected the strains I was experiencing. That we were becoming more isolated and lonely, while the negative effects of our interlocking destinies were manifesting through things like violence, war, and a weakening of trust throughout society. I decided to dive into just how this had happened, time and time again, and if there were any examples in our physical world that defied these realities.
Entanglements is a more popular topic in relationships . While somewhat co-opted by the spiritual movement, the movement of particles at the atomic level is a great framework that shows the way our past can impact our present . The way that even through generations, the collective memory of trauma can become intertwined with our present, and our future. Braiding, a quantum concept, creates entanglement by the weaving of certain paths to create a final state. These quasiparticles, anyons, especially non-abelian anyons are able to store information through the storage of the paths they took to get to their final state. This made me think about the way that the histories of us and those who came before us are stored in our psyches at the individual and societal level.
Stereo Love and Sugarplum Forest are about molecules. Emotions and molecules have been a topic I’ve explored in the past but this dives a bit deeper: This is about the way that neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine can produce emotion in the self and the way geometric properties can influence dendritic arborization, synaptic connectivity, and signal propagation within neurons. In other words the way that form affects function or the way we feel. We all have differences in our neural architecture and this influences the way we find ourselves feeling different ways. Geometry can be used to examine how our branch angles and lengths determine the spatial distribution of synaptic inputs and the computational properties of dendrites.Our brain is not only an overgrown forest with geometry being used to make predictions about the way it grows out but also in the way different electrical signals and patterns arise . This made me think about our personalities, our behaviors, and the way our brains are wired, that come together to create a cacophony of feelings like joy but also fear , suspicion , and hate. This poem is about the way our thoughts and feelings arise.
Then In September, a friend in Austin told me about the Theremin, a magical instrument you could move with just your hands. I was shocked and then saw it in real life, at an Adobe event. This made me think about the way we can affect each other in seemingly invisible ways but also the way we can’t control how something affects us . While we have the power to walk away it takes two to tango . This led to Symphonic Relations . While we can’t control how something might affect us there is a difference between our output like pitch and sound and who we are in a deeper sense . The way we can react a certain way and not internalize but instead witness. Awareness of the difference between this being essential in growth. The poem looks at the way the geometry in the electromagnetic fields affects the sound the theremin makes.
Then In December, I was walking past a booth at the Miami Design Fair, and I saw something striking. This crystal that reflected back a blue but at times reflected its mirror. I stopped and gazed at the striking piece. While I never found the piece in question, this led to my fifth poem: Bounce Back. I began looking up what the piece could be, and I found about this rock, Cordierite. Cordierite is Pleochroic, meaning it reflects different colors depending on the angle of light . Vikings supposedly used it to know where the sun was in the sky . This made me think about the way we react to others and our ability as humans to either let something pass through us , store it , or reflect what we are thrown at. I’ve had friends that say that it feels impossible to control how they react much like a fixed color on a crystal . But both crystal structure and neuropsychological research show us that there are other ways of being.
Finally- A Cosmic Twist is about Reflection Nebulae, the way that light can be reflected off these small dust clouds in the Universe, that allows us to see things we can’t. And that these objects appear more faint. The way that dust grains scatter and reflect light can be understood through geometry, like the Rayleigh scattering. This made me think that while the answers might be inside of us, we can look outside ourselves to others to learn more about ourselves. It also made me think about technology, as I’m exploring the way technology can tell us about ourselves in another project. My hope is that technology can bring us closer to others by using them as a reflective tool for us to learn about our own fears, desires, and dreams, gain more empathy for others, and come together.
In sum, the series focuses on the ways our past influences our present, the way our thoughts and how they are conditioned impacts our actions, the way others’ moves impact us, and finally into a reflection of the self through others in order to understand ourselves better to become more connected as a society.
Entanglements
Down the yellow brick road
They went grounded
Non-abelian anyons and friends
Criss-crossing paths storing something deep within
Our ancestors’ stories and lives
Hop-scotching across each other through time
They came
excited, creating something
we can’t unbind:
these ligaments
Unable to exhume and excavate our own skin
We look for troves of treasures
Answers Within
A Biopsy of the self
But with
a x b=c
b x b =a
c x c =b
We can mark the spot
To know where we once bled and dripped
Where our bodies were ripped apart
soldered and fused back together
A Topography to a
Topology of the body
Lineages
of line leaders gone astray
A reverse order of operations
The Recordance of
a closed loop-circuit
Memories of
Non-Compliance creating
Non-Commutativity
in this present plane
Unique individuals
Without any local interference
Not by ourselves but
With our self and selves past
We must hold our bodies tightly
As they try to twist, turn, and squirm
Into decoherence
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