Verschränkung

by Renee Reynolds

The more you hit your head, the more likely you are to hit your head again.

He muttered it to his pencil, closed his eyes and tilted his head back.

Each time you hit your head, the chances of hitting your head again… increase.

 

I was on the bunk above him, peering through the space between the wall and my pillow.

I’m sure Feynman would agree, I said grinning.

Haha! You’re awake.

 

I am.

 

You know, I think you’re right.

 

About what? That I am awake, or about your head-hitting theory?

Umm…Both.

 

Right.

Thud, ouch

Are you fabricating findings?

 

Never!

I close my eyes.

And then I smell pencil shavings. And then I smell the sea. And then he’s kissing me…

Our lips: cordial at first, swelled with candor and then carnage.

A small cold and wet thing presses against my nose and swathes my eyelid. And then PAIN. Acute prick in the corner of right eye. Pain, pain, pain… We disengage.

I squint to focus. Sniffing, purring, and massive is the culprit – a disembodied cathead with an eye-duct-stabbing whisker.

Finally waking all the way up, I think, I am mixed or smeared-out in equal parts — not sure which. There is no light but something is glowing somewhere – although I cannot see myself, there are outlines of the couch, the ceiling, the cathead (with body now and studying me from the furthest corner).

I hold my eye and an irreverent voice then fills the space, You are in her spot, it said.

 

Oh, hello! Who are you? I said to the air.

 

Well, I’m not your tour guide – hahaha! No, ok, it was raining cats and dogs and you said that you were a friend of Erwin’s so I buzzed you in.

 

Oh. That was good of you, thanks.…so where is Erwin?

She stood in the kitchen doorway, tall and skinny, slowly leaning into her words:

A  cad  sinner high shoring.

“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a “blurred model” for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”

–Schrödinger on his cat

 

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