Here, Kitty-kitty!

Kitty

Another Saturday morning and all is right in my little corner of the universe…or is it?

Is it, for one thing, my little corner of the universe? How is this corner defined? If this is the only thing I’ve ever known, wouldn’t my view of the universe be skewed? What if what I think of as my little corner of the universe (hereinafter called MLCOTU), is not the way things really are, and what if all around me, the universe is going to hell in a hand basket?

Is the universe, as I perceive it, the only universe there is? If it is, would that mean that my perception of MLCOTU is universal? Would an ant, crawling about on the ground of MLCOTU, see things the same way I would? Would it think that all was right with the universe, too?

All these universes, existing at the same time – assuming the ant and I each have a concept of time and that those concepts are exactly the same – begs the question, which one is real?

What is reality? Is it concrete, absolute, irrefutable? Is it situational, in the eye of the beholder, shifty, unimportant?

My mother grew up with the understanding that some things were set in stone: the sun rose in the east, set in the west; the earth orbited the sun; the atom was the smallest unit of measure in the universe.

Then, she worked on the Manhattan Project, briefly, and helped do some of the research that led to the first atomic weapon developed here on this planet.

Her reality changed when that first atom was split, even though she was unaware of the precise moment that occurred. For her, the paradigm shift took place when news of the bombing of Hiroshima reached her ears. Then, again, when she realized her part in that catastrophe, even though her part in the drama had been miniscule.

What happened to the universe she knew when it ceased to exist for her? Did it live on as a parallel reality for her metaphysical doppelganger?

Do parallel universes exist? Do we create our own realities?

Yesterday, I spent my book-budget on three small volumes I thought would add more to my life than if I bought my intended purchase, Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes. I bought them not because I would be getting three for the price I would have paid for hers (that was a plus – icing on the cupcake, so to speak), but because I was seduced by the titles: 50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need to Know, and its counterparts, 50 Philosophy… and 50 Physics..., et cetera. I believe there are ideas worth learning about, and I have been on a quest to learn as many of them as possible before I die. (Some publisher saw the likes of me coming, and came up with titles that not only drew me to that shelf in the store, but made me plunk down my hard-earned, hard-saved money for these three books.)

I spent a couple of hours in my favorite coffee shop skimming through the books. Time slowed down and became wobbly, like gelatin. My reality was shifting before my very eyes, then back again because what I read was still being digested…or was that because of the pastry I was munching upon while reading?

At some point, long after I returned home, my brain cried out, “Enough, already!” I went to bed and dreamed of Alice’s Cheshire cat in a multi-dimensional box full of constantly shifting portals into other multi-dimensional, theoretical boxes -- and images from high school science classes of the atomic bomb blasts. The God Particle became an article God wrote for Playboy magazine. In the interview section of that issue, God sounded like Bill Cosby, talking to Noah about building a boat. I saw my mother – rather, multiples of my mother – through what must have been honeycomb glasses: rows and rows of tiny Evelyns in tiny hexagonal compartments, all the same, yet each one different from the other because each existed in a separate ‘reality.’

Maybe the dream wasn’t the result of reading the books. Maybe it was because of the anti-histamine I took so I could breathe easier and sleep more deeply.

I liked Saturday mornings better when it was just birdsong and breakfast odors wafting through the backdoor screen. After breakfast, I think I’ll tackle the chapter in the mathematics book on Latin squares. It’s supposed to provide me with the secret to solving Sudoku puzzles.

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore