Page 25 - The Irony Board

Into the Mind

Action is
A quantum
Of desire:

Subthreshold
Levels are
Raised higher

Or wait for
Their half-life
To expire.

Emotion is often represented in Gluckman’s works by metaphors
drawn from the physical sciences. This may be an attempt to
demystify or reduce to basics an element of psychology too often
cloaked in cultural or literary terms. Hormones are in fact produced
by glands under stimulation by the nervous system. The process by
which information in the brain is translated into motivation is not
yet understood, but the “black box” in which emotion is a prime
mover may be examined poetically as well as behavioristically.
The poem uses the “packet” concept of quantum mechanics to
explain why a discontinuity exists between feeling and acting.
Instead of a small desire always leading to a limited action, often
nothing happens; further, that subthreshold quantity of desire may
not be perceptible to others (or even to the desirer) because no
action has taken place. Like the energy level of atomic particles, the
intensity of desire must be raised to the point of emitting a unit of
action. Those desires not sufficiently stimulated (even physicists say
“excited”) may follow a statistically predictable schedule of decay
similar to the logarithmic curve exhibited by radioactivity.

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