1 beige clock on paint-plain shelf set apart in a sparse display of dusty knick-knacks – isolated monuments, unmoved by daily flux; in the blank-walled living room, beige mantle clock presides, divides time into instants of living tick by tick. each tick – clear youth / clouded age; each tick – sturdy strength / frail fatigue; each tick separate – distinct; each tick somehow the same – identical, like electrons, differentiated only by context, individuated by situation alone; like all lives, transposable, nondistinct – except, perhaps, internally; your life is yours alone does each electron feel the same? 2 each electron, & each life just transient deviation in background vacuum – a drop flung up from the ocean-all, hanging a timeless moment, then falling back to merge again, dissolve again, in wholeness of reality. i’m not ready yet to lose myself in unity, annihilated into oneness, universal numbness. i’ll stay myself, for now, unique & other, distinct from the all, the all in all, that’s all that is. does each electron feel the same?
