So Much Depends
July 1997. The saturated air slaps my face like a smack of wet fish as I walk out the front door toward Glenview Road. Four miles to the east Lake Michigan must have evaporated into the atmosphere overnight, spirited away by an easterly wind as an offering to the clouds, the sailboats of summer washed up like silvery alewives along a dry lakebed. At least the boats won’t stink like the alewives did in June thirty years ago when they lay dead and dying in a layer three feet deep by twenty feet wide along the shoreline, their stench blown inland, our neighborhood reeking of decay.
Down the hill and north into Harms Woods. Honeybees whirl like dervishes around a thicket of wild roses. Except for a lone worker bee whose task it is to keep me at bay, the swarm pays no mind to a voyeur’s fascination with their exuberance over pink blossoms and yellow stamens. Could my observation of these nectar-drunken bees possibly alter their behavior? It doesn’t appear so, but then honeybees don’t live in Schröedinger’s sealed box in a state of superposition; they don’t live in all possible states at once until the moment I chance to observe them; they dance and drink in a macroscopic world of sunlight right here and now in front of my eyes.
I walk on. The frenzied bees may not be indeterminate, but a few calcified cells residing in my left breast are, ever since a needle biopsy three days ago. Inside the sealed box that is my body, my cells have been thrust into a state of superposition until someone, some medical establishment voyeur, observes through a microscope the six little plugs taken from my breast at gunpoint. Only then will uncertainty be resolved. So much depends upon the observer.
Lighter than air, my steps follow a gravel path to a patch of milkweed for which I’ve developed an exuberance: broad, alternating green leaves with hairy undersides; milky white latex sap; cloyingly sweet pink flowers; yellow, white, and black poker-chip caterpillars; red-orange beetles; black and orange monarch butterflies; brown seed pods with silken white filaments. The saturated morning beads on my forehead and runs in rivulets down the back of my neck. Condensation on a cooler object. Drop by drop I alone am pulling the Great Lake known as Michigan back from the clouds; it helps to have a purpose.
July 1997. The saturated air slaps my face like a smack of wet fish as I walk out the front door toward Glenview Road. Four miles to the east Lake Michigan must have evaporated into the atmosphere overnight, spirited away by an easterly wind as an offering to the clouds, the sailboats of summer washed up like silvery alewives along a dry lakebed. At least the boats won’t stink like the alewives did in June thirty years ago when they lay dead and dying in a layer three feet deep by twenty feet wide along the shoreline, their stench blown inland, our neighborhood reeking of decay.
Down the hill and north into Harms Woods. Honeybees whirl like dervishes around a thicket of wild roses. Except for a lone worker bee whose task it is to keep me at bay, the swarm pays no mind to a voyeur’s fascination with their exuberance over pink blossoms and yellow stamens. Could my observation of these nectar-drunken bees possibly alter their behavior? It doesn’t appear so, but then honeybees don’t live in Schröedinger’s sealed box in a state of superposition; they don’t live in all possible states at once until the moment I chance to observe them; they dance and drink in a macroscopic world of sunlight right here and now in front of my eyes.
I walk on. The frenzied bees may not be indeterminate, but a few calcified cells residing in my left breast are, ever since a needle biopsy three days ago. Inside the sealed box that is my body, my cells have been thrust into a state of superposition until someone, some medical establishment voyeur, observes through a microscope the six little plugs taken from my breast at gunpoint. Only then will uncertainty be resolved. So much depends upon the observer.
Lighter than air, my steps follow a gravel path to a patch of milkweed for which I’ve developed an exuberance: broad, alternating green leaves with hairy undersides; milky white latex sap; cloyingly sweet pink flowers; yellow, white, and black poker-chip caterpillars; red-orange beetles; black and orange monarch butterflies; brown seed pods with silken white filaments. The saturated morning beads on my forehead and runs in rivulets down the back of my neck. Condensation on a cooler object. Drop by drop I alone am pulling the Great Lake known as Michigan back from the clouds; it helps to have a purpose.
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