A time and a place

There is, so the saying goes, a time and a place for everything. A place for everything, and everything in its place. I wonder, sometimes, if I haven’t simply stepped outside of my allotted time, or perhaps misplaced my place.

I am pretty certain, however, that where I find myself is not where myself is. It, I, am elsewhere. Observing my self: that is, myself observes my self. A sort of auto-surveillance. I took a wrong turn. Now I find it impossible to turn around. There seems to be no way to retrace the steps.

I think I left my ball of twine behind. My lifeline. The ties which bound.

Now they are not so much severed as they simply aren’t. It’s like belief – one either believes or one doesn’t. Neither, ultimately, have any greater claim to absolute authority than the other. The leap we take is one of faith: faith that there is a safety net; faith that there is none. Like Schrödinger, we have no idea whether the cat is alive or dead until we open the box … the act of opening forces what loiters inside to decide on its state.

In typically irritating fashion, Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment. That means, ultimately, that upon opening the box, the cat which exists in our imagination as a conceptual model of certain quantum properties of light, must not only make a choice regarding its mortal state, but must also persuade us, the opener of a conceptual box thus exposing the conceptual cat, that one certain way of thinking of it is correct.

And this, mark you, is a conceptual cat … something which exists only in the mind is attempting to convince us, or perhaps awaiting conviction, that one particular state is the right and proper state.

The cat asks us to place our certainty, to align ourselves securely with one socio-political principle.

Le chat est mort. Vive le chat!

There is, so they say, a time and a faith for everything.

My faith is unplaced. And I simply do not know how to replace it.