SCHRODINGER'S CAT

El Gato Loco

DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE

SCHRODINGER’S CAT

by Adam Carroll Draper

“There’s an adventure in every bowl of Alpha-Bits.”[1]  Do you remember that one?  Or how about Forest Gump’s box of choc-o-luuttss, which may or may not have contained Schrodinger’s cat. 

Here’s another way to come at this.  Young Tommy is walking down Cabra Road in Dublin when a man stops and hails him.

“Lad, could ya tell me that fastest way to the airport?”

“Are ya walkin’ or drivin’?” asks Tommy.

“Driving, of course!”

“Well then, that’s the fastest way, isn’t it?”

Stef and I were walking back to our hotel in Asheville this week when we passed a handsome couple coming out of a bar to have a smoke.  (This happened.  It’s not a joke… necessarily).  They told us we needed to try a drink they had just discovered.  Sadly, I had been sick and was not capable of the tarry, but they were very interesting people, so we chatted as they smoked.  They lived in Durham, most recently by way of various spots in California, and had opened a tea shop in that city that is eight miles away from Chapel Hill.  After making sure that neither of them were dookies (nor associated with that place we do not name), we talked to them about Stef’s incipient endeavor with a probiotic tea called jun.  (Interesting, if only by sibilance, the name of Stef’s new product is SiPT – Simply Irresistible Probiotic Tea). 

Given our new-found commonality, we all began singing the praises of tea and healthy guts, when this thing happened.  I said that I thought the importance of tea to the gut biome and the awakening to it were both inherently spiritual.  We smiled like cousins reunited, and a heavily chattered download ensued.  He was Muslim, originally from Sudan; and she a Berkley grad.  We talked on the sidewalk about God and names and meaning and being and how we are all one and the same single person, deceived in a garden.  We’d all had this conversation before, just not with each other.

While we were talking about God, a man came by and asked if any of us had spare change for a homeless man.  None of us did.  I mean, who carries cash any more.   A few minutes later, another man asked our new friend if he had a spare cigarette.  Our friend said that this was, in fact, his last and that he and his wife were sharing it.  The expectant man turned abruptly and departed in disgusted agitation with the general denunciation that our new-found friend had “turned into a white dude.”

So there was evening and there was morning; and we had new harmony with new cousins we will call and visit soon – and we also had the same old BS of us and them (perhaps?).  That first part was good.  I don’t know what it all means any more than I know what Schrodinger’s cat must be thinking.

Stef and I had several other deep, drive-by conversations in which we met people of good will and spiritual moment as we were hanging out in Asheville.  Each encounter happened because we expressed some variant of spiritual connection and love.  Each moment meant something and offered the potential of new friendship.  I was meditating on this while sick in bed in our room when it occurred to me that this is the life I have longed for, sharing love and joy and peace all over the place like a box of choc-o-luuttss.

I am reminded of a quote attributed to St. Francis: “Share the gospel wherever you go, and if you have to, speak.”

[1] Alpha-Bits is a registered name owned entirely by Post Foods, which owns that slogan, too.  Just because I remember seeing the commercials as a kid, does not mean I can throw out some slogan launched into the bombarded airways of my youth to carom and echo endlessly in the cragglating neptons (my term, hah!) of my mind without acknowledging its ownership.  You better recognize!  How’s that for a plainly worded, if unnecessary, acknowledgment?

If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment and/or share it. It helps. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to read it.