November Qualia

Four moments: driving, office stairwell, supermarket, sleep. Author is Buddhist, but everyone has similar small moments, usually unnoticed, unremembered. Timeless, frozen, neither atomic nor not, they connect, inner-outer, past-present-future, percept-concept, body-mind, & more.

6:41 am

Clear leaf cloud masses
     motionlessly moving
past the static gray road -
     almost too lovely to bear.

6:53 am

Pipe dust red vivid bolted,
     shining,
is, not more not less,
     timeless, perfected.

7:26 pm

Save us from shopping, wanting
     vultures
in markets of flesh, hung
     with gaudy christmas banners.

1:47 am

Unbounded plankton sea,
     swimming - light - dots -
meshing connected, no
     body no
self.

Joseph Goguen
21-22 November 2004
La Jolla

Published in J. Consciousness Studies 12, no. 11, November 2005.
See Time, Structure and Emotion in Music for a fairly intuitive discussion of qualia in the arts.
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