Calculus

We proposed in the mid 1990s that consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons. — Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, “Consciousness in the Universe: A Review of the ‘Orch OR’ Theory.” Physics of Life Reviews 11(1), March 2014, pp. 39–78.

We look for it
in some tiny place
A structure in the brain
A microtubule in a cell
A curled 11-dimensional string

We imagine it
a field, laid out
on spacetime, a matrix
of infinitesimal
points

We try to find it
by going back in time
or collapsing in,
shrinking towards
a singularity

But infinitesimal and singularity
are concepts from calculus,
limits of infinite journeys
We find ourselves caught
in Zeno’s paradox

trying to touch the hub
between the spokes, the doorway
between the jambs, the pause

between the breaths, the ma
between the fragment
and the phrase

From A coat of ashes.
First published in Meniscus 5(1), June 2017.