Entangled maps within the mind
Make true location hard to find.
Give any two people in a relationship time, and their common experiences will become both more and less common. Sounds contradictory, but consider your own relationship with someone.
You met. The two of you mapped that meeting. “Where did you two meet?” your friend asks at a party. Then you tell the tale, or your partner tells the tale. The many specific details, buried in a map of the meeting, are not the focus. The tale is more like a set of directions to a neighborhood, rather than to a particular site in all its details. “It was October, and we met at Smith’s Bar right after the game against the Golden Wannabees,” your partner says. You nod in agreement. Yes, the time stamp is on the tale, and so is Smith’s Bar. But, for the listener, the description lacks the smell of beer, the loud noise and the shouting of the introduction as you told your name, the barstool color and shape, the lighting, and everything else that made the environment of your meeting. It also lacks the perspective. Were you sitting side by side? Standing and facing each other? Within a couple of feet? Pressed together by a crowd of mutual friends? Did you shake hands? What expression did you see? Whew! There was a lot of detail in that meeting, wasn’t there?
Over the years, the map of the meeting became both enriched and impoverished. The two of you enhanced the map by intervening experiences as your minds merged into more commonality. The two of you also lost some of the details to overriding images. The map-making event also differed for the two of you. You faced the door; your partner faced the interior of Smith’s Bar. Your perspective was different as you looked toward either a taller or a shorter person. So many details from different perspectives captured under two slightly different moods and emotional responses under the effects of different stimuli and in varying degrees of confidence, or wonder, or trepidation, all going into a map of the moment in a very particular place.
Then entanglement ensued. Like a quantum particle the two of you carried the map first through separate journeys and then through common ones. What does the map look like now? It traces a complexity of experience beyond a single meeting. The two of you might never find your way to that location, but that location has overprinted every other location in your lives. The maps are entangled. You are entangled.
Make true location hard to find.
Give any two people in a relationship time, and their common experiences will become both more and less common. Sounds contradictory, but consider your own relationship with someone.
You met. The two of you mapped that meeting. “Where did you two meet?” your friend asks at a party. Then you tell the tale, or your partner tells the tale. The many specific details, buried in a map of the meeting, are not the focus. The tale is more like a set of directions to a neighborhood, rather than to a particular site in all its details. “It was October, and we met at Smith’s Bar right after the game against the Golden Wannabees,” your partner says. You nod in agreement. Yes, the time stamp is on the tale, and so is Smith’s Bar. But, for the listener, the description lacks the smell of beer, the loud noise and the shouting of the introduction as you told your name, the barstool color and shape, the lighting, and everything else that made the environment of your meeting. It also lacks the perspective. Were you sitting side by side? Standing and facing each other? Within a couple of feet? Pressed together by a crowd of mutual friends? Did you shake hands? What expression did you see? Whew! There was a lot of detail in that meeting, wasn’t there?
Over the years, the map of the meeting became both enriched and impoverished. The two of you enhanced the map by intervening experiences as your minds merged into more commonality. The two of you also lost some of the details to overriding images. The map-making event also differed for the two of you. You faced the door; your partner faced the interior of Smith’s Bar. Your perspective was different as you looked toward either a taller or a shorter person. So many details from different perspectives captured under two slightly different moods and emotional responses under the effects of different stimuli and in varying degrees of confidence, or wonder, or trepidation, all going into a map of the moment in a very particular place.
Then entanglement ensued. Like a quantum particle the two of you carried the map first through separate journeys and then through common ones. What does the map look like now? It traces a complexity of experience beyond a single meeting. The two of you might never find your way to that location, but that location has overprinted every other location in your lives. The maps are entangled. You are entangled.
RSS Feed