Mindy Newell: July 18, 2017
When the father of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrodinger – he of Schrödinger’s Cat fame – told a Dublin audience in 1952 that “…his Nobel equations seemed to describe several different histories, these were ‘not alternatives, but all really happen simultaneously,’ it was the first time that the multiverse was addressed as a scientific theory and not just science fiction.
So Editor Mike texted me on Saturday to let me know that Adam Strange – I don’t mean an actor, I mean the DC character–is going to be a regular on the new Krypton series on SyFy sometime in 2018, if everything stays on track – and how often does that happen?
For those not in the know, and that’s all of you, because I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here, Adam Strange was my first “comics crush” back in the day, and I continue to love him. And I don’t mean any modern interpretation of him, but the original science fiction personage created by Julius Schwartz, with a costume design by Murphy Anderson, and who first appeared in Showcase #17, cover-dated November 1958. (I was five years old.)
I texted him back:
“Adam Strange has nothing to do with Krypton.”
Mike: “Well, he does now. This series, which lives in a universe separate from the comics, the movies, and maybe even the other teevee [sic] serieses [sic], is set in both the deep past (on the planet Krypton, no longer extant) and in the present day. But let us remember that Superman does not exist on the teevee [sic] Earth where Flash, Green Arrow, and the Legends live.”
Me: “Part of the multiverse.”
Mike: “Sure. Aren’t we all?”
And then, I wrote this back to him:
“Maybe that’s what death is. I mean the ‘near death’ experiences that people talk about…that white light…some kind of “wormhole” event horizon connecting us to the next life in the next universe, the one that is ‘second star to the right and straight on to morning’…And that’s why people have reincarnation experiences and/or déjà vu…They are glimpses of the multiverse.”
Quantum leaping.
• • • • •
Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. So don’t be afraid… Matthew 10:29, 31
Driving down to Cherry Hill with Alixandra to see my mom last Sunday – somewhere in my heart I knew this would be the last time – we hit traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike. Not enough to slow down completely, but the speedometer was reading 45 or 50 mph. All of a sudden, a sparrow landed on the passenger side-view mirror. It just sat there for a few seconds, maybe five, looking at us through the window. And then it flew away.
As in an M. Knight Shaymalan movie, there are signs everywhere.
My favorite line in Ben-Hur:
“The world is more than we know.”
• • • • •
Today, as I write this, is Sunday, July 23, 2017.
It has been six days.
Four since the funeral.
Yet somehow it feels like forever.
And at the same time like it didn’t happen at all.
I guess that is as good as any definition of grief.
