Dot Product: The Cross Between Particle Theory and Pointillism

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884; image credit: Public Domain

Dot Product: The Cross Between Particle Theory and Pointillism 
(originally published in the 2011 issue of Paper Nautilus)

  Ø

Up close, everything is made up

of elementary particles, tiny dots.

They vibrate, shimmer, dance

wildly.

Maybe because they’re agitated,

maybe because they’re excited,

it doesn’t matter.

                  The countless tiny particles

that makes us and fill us

are moving, always moving,
even if just a quiver.

  ω

At a distance, anything

of any shape

will look like a dot, a mere point.

An insignificant dot risks

being missed

unless it is named.

And so those who explicate

have given a name—point particles—

to the near nothingness

of our elementary dancing dots.

And the explicators say

those point particles at the root of everything—

idealized—they have no structure,

have no mass.

They take up no space.

Up close

then, perhaps nothing

can look like a dot

because there is no

thing to see.

And yet—

here we are. We, who are made of quivering particles,

we have mass.

We take up space.

ℵ₁

At a distance, a huddle of dots                                   

will take shape, will take color.

Take pointillism: a technique of painting

that uses countless numbers

of colored dots, distinct and unblended dots

all on the flat plane of a raw canvas.

Point after point of pure and different color.

                                    When viewed from afar,

the dots will be marshaled into solid shapes

by the mind:

perhaps into the shape of a proper parasol

held by a woman,

a bustled woman,

prim and detached,

a monkey at her feet,

a romping dog by her side.

In the distance, a boat at full sail,

white and billowy.

And those dots, perhaps a division

of blues, purples, oranges, and yellows,

will converge and blend into some other color—

let’s imagine into the fragrant green of a grassy field.

Form and color, forged

from the smallest dots with no structure.

ℵ₂

At a distance, God is a pointillist painter

and time a ready canvas.

At a distance, the universe is a painting in some art gallery

            and evolution a paint-by-point particles adventure.

At a distance, humanity is a palette of constrained color
            and I am one dot, dancing wildly.