Does Schrödinger's cat imagine while she's waiting?

On paradoxes and whether or not I have strep throat

I’m waiting in a room at urgent care. Do I have strep throat? Both of the children do. The nurse has swabbed the back of my throat and I’m waiting for the results. My pulse is low. My blood pressure is low. The lighting is not low. I’m reminded of all the times I’ve waited for something and the anxiety of indeterminacy.

I imagine the room was designed to be functional, sterile, and pleasant. The machines are shades of white. The counter is lacquered. I expected a thin sheet of paper across the examination table, but there were two chairs with sky-blue vinyl upholstery instead. I am sitting in one.

I noticed there were no longer magazines in the waiting room, but I expected there would not be. Full of germs, those magazines, my mother said when I told her I was going to urgent care. Everyone looks at their phones, anyway, she said. I am wearing a mask. Everyone is wearing a mask. Like everyone, I look at my phone.

I don’t think I have strep throat. I am energetic. But the children were also energetic; it was a persistent rash that led me to take one of them to the doctor. The rash was an outcome of strep, the doctor said. The other also had a rash. Bring in the other. They were both positive. For the curious, the rash is called impetigo, I’d never heard of it, but apparently, it’s contagious.

So, I want the certainty of a test, of an expert who does tests; I want to see myself from the outside in. I am regularly meeting people in person these days. I teach 48 undergraduates in a bright second-floor classroom. I loathe to be an irresponsible person, a contagion.

I write these words in my head, in the sky-blue chair, in the small room. I’ve set my phone down. I can actually see the words, in this font. I’m constantly writing for an imaginary audience; I’ve got a mind full of interlopers and champions, of strangers, colleagues, and friends. Many are kind. Some are distracted. There are a few hecklers. They often try and steal my attention. Don’t be stupid, says one, no one cares about this. Stop. I try and listen to the quiet voices. In this little room, I’m looking at the clock, ticking on the wall. In literary theory, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “heteroglossia” helps me explain what is happening in my imagination, though he’s analyzing novels, primarily, not imaginary texts in my head. He’s very dead anyway, but not really.

Sitting in a waiting room writing in my head, I have a sense of control I’m pleased that I have. For many years, I didn’t fully realize there was a changing, imaginary audience in my head. As a result, I was absolutely befuddled when I could easily write or create something challenging in one situation but struggled to do a task of equal challenge in another. Why? Let’s pretend I’m writing a summary of my novel, and why it’s important, for a grant application to a literary organization versus in a letter to my kind, clairvoyant aunt. Both tasks involved explaining my novel, but the words are very different. But when I feel jammed, tasked with writing for a panel of judges, I pretend I’m writing to my loving aunt. When I realized that I was imagining my audiences differently—often because the stakes were different—the floor gave way to a new world of creation. Conditions can be changed through acts of imagination.

When I invited you to read my words, I may have revealed this: “I’d love to imagine you among my readers.” And it’s true. I actually imagine you. I think about where you are. Usually, I imagine you in the last place we met. If we haven’t met, I imagine myself imagining you in the last place I was when engaged with you. For instance, if we corresponded and I was at my desk, in my old house with the view of the cedar tree, I imagine me and you then. It’s a feeling. I was walking on 127th in the spring, the part where the sidewalk ends and there’s a view of the sea. At the open-air coffee house with skylarks chirping on the ceiling beams. In the dank hallway near your old office in the 1970s building nestled among eucalyptus trees that still lives in my imagination, but I am told was torn down. At the vibrant, noisy, vegetarian restaurant in Montreal, with wooden benches and fashionable patrons. At the entrance of Madison Square Park in icy New York City. My associations of you are bodily. And, I know I can change what I do because of how I imagine.

This is a selfie I took in late winter, five years ago. I was waiting for something, maybe you? These were the days when I dyed my hair and liked to wear red lipstick.

It’s here I remember the thought experiment about Schrödinger's cat. Here in the urgent care. Here, alone with my thoughts, in a waiting room. As far as I remember it—and, obviously, I’m not a physicist—the thought experiment is an effort to describe a paradox. About being and not being, decay and undecay, dead and not dead. About the crucial moment of observation for the embodiment of the atom. I wonder, can an observer exist inside the cat? Inside the atom? I suppose I can’t know that, but I can share that I have observers inside me.

The doctor is accompanied by a doctor in training. She says, “Mustard color, I love it.” It takes me a moment to realize she’s referencing my yellow sweater. Is the doctor or the doctor in training speaking to me? I’m not sure, I smile under my mask. I hope they can see the smile in my eyes. She asks:

Do you want to know the test results? Do I have strep?

I do. I do not.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

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I’m working on a Book Tok video. My first Book Tok! I’ve assigned my students to make such videos as an assignment. Long ones, which engage with course materials, obviously. So I’ll do one too, it’s only fair. I’ll be sure to share when I’m finished.


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Thank you for reading The Gift.

Until next time,

Monika
The Gift


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