20210219F Day 416: Schrödinger’s COVID

2021-0206S-2040-AustinTX

This morning I woke up feeling well … unexpectedly well. I even exclaimed to my friends that I don’t recall ever feeling so healthy and alive – almost like being reborn. To tell the story properly, I should start at the beginning – well, not the very beginning since I don’t have that much time, but I’ll start at the beginning of the week.

Day 397 (Sunday) – My good friend Katie had been staying with her ex and sons for a few weeks. When I heard she was flying back to Austin, I offered to pick her up at the airport. Mid afternoon I got a message from her – she missed her connecting flight. Ahh, evidence of a split in the universe, I thought at the time. Her missed connection was an unexpected event. I dismissed it instead of pondering what new futures might be visible now. An hour later I got a new message that she had been placed on a new flight arriving late Sunday.

“I can still pick you up – and you can stay overnight if you want”, I text Katie.

“Awesome!”, Katie replied.

Had I stopped to ponder the universe split, I would have realized that it had increased the probability that Katie would be staying over. Most likely, had I picked her up earlier in the day, we would have caught up and then I would have taken her home. But with her arriving late, it was more likely she would stay over. Nothing much else changed between these two universes where she made or missed her connecting flight.

My day continued normally and I picked Katie up at the airport. I confirmed she wanted to stay over.

“Would you like to take a shower?”, I offered. You can’t be too safe these days with a COVID pandemic and potentially infected people traveling on planes.

“Yes, that sounds really good. Do you have any clean clothes I can wear?”, Katie replied.

“Sure, you can also do a load of laundry if you want”, I answered.

As Katie took a shower, I showed in the other bathroom. After we were both dressed, Katie said with annoyance, “My ex just texted me that he has a fever. He probably made himself sick. He’s such a hypochondriac.”

I even had a good night’s sleep. Since the beginning of the week when I found out my friend had become sick with COVID, I had been preparing for the worst. I had picked her up from the airport late Sunday and we had talked late into the night, falling asleep together in bed. She coughed a few times during the night, but nothing alarming. While she was over, she got notified that someone she had been in contact with recently now had a fever. In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to this moment. It was like …

(to be continued)

2021-0219F-0836-AustinTX

Day 416 (Friday) – Katie and I are listening to soft piano music playing over the Sonos speaker in my living room. The sun is reflecting off of the ice covered trees outside. Snow is still on the ground from a few days ago. We are cuddled under the covers while lying on Katie’s egg-crate mattress topper. It’s time for us to write. Katie just read a prompt to me about how when we are creating, then the creator is also creating through us. It made me think about life and creation. I imagined how all life on Earth could have been designed by some intelligent alien life form and somehow seeded onto Earth. But this could not be the original creation event since the intelligent alien life form also needs a creation story. I zoomed my perspective out in both time and space and imagined and quantum field of random fluctuations flowing through the field. This reminded me of the Tai Chi that Katie and I were practicing the day before and how the instructor led us through a slow, smooth movement practice that would occasionally result in a slap of energy. From this zoomed out perspective, I saw the entirety of the universe we know as an infinitesimal point in space-time.

“It’s going to be lumpy”, Katie said as she stirred a pot of polenta on the stove.

“That’s what our universe is, just a bit of lumpiness”, I replied.