Girlfriend Trouble is Inspiring

Last year, Everything2.com (the site where I publish most of my writing) conducted a poetry contest. Now, in my entire time on this earth, I'd only written about five pieces of poetry that I would dare share with another person, but I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Using my relationships of the last ten years (my so-called 'grown-up relationships') as inspiration, I found I was able to work up four pieces. If I say so myself, I think they were pretty good.

In order to set this one up, I must digress briefly into the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics. There's a famous imaginary model physicists use to explain one of the picky points of quantum physics---it is called Schrödinger's Cat, after physicist Erwin Schrödinger*.

Without delving too deeply into unnecessary esoterica, Schrödinger imagined a strange situation wherein a cat would be in box, hidden from view. There is exactly a 50% chance that the kitty in question has been killed (remember, this is imaginary, no actual felines were harmed in the making of this thought experiment). Now, in the 'real' world, it would either be a living cat or one who was pushing up daisies, but in the twilight realm of the quantum, it's actually 50% alive and 50% dead until someone opens the box and looks at the cat. Then it becomes 100% alive or 100% flown off to join the kitty choir invisible.

Clear enough? Okay, good.

Quantum Physics is full of this sort of wacky uncertainty---which makes sense because it is about tiny particles interacting in bizarre and nebulous ways. One of the most famous axioms is Dr Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. It's a science of grey areas and strangeness.

So, back to poetry: at the time of the noted competition, I was in a situation where I felt approximately 50% as though I was a part of a happy relationship, and 50% like we'd be going our separate ways at any moment, pending her say-so. It was kind of confusing and disquieting. One morning, as I lay in bed pondering my strange and uncertain romance I said "it's like she's Schrödinger's Girlfriend." And, well, how are you gonna resist that?

So that's where the poem came from.

Schrödinger's Girlfriend by me

          Back in the old days
         Folks were so certain
        Predestination
         A path of God's choosing

        Along came the men
         With their proofs
        And their theorems
         All of it got just a bit more confusing.


I really would like to create the equations
   Define our relations
   With one derivation
Here is my question on many occasions,
   "What does she want me to do?"

It would be great if life weren't so complex
   We'd make an index
   Find a value for x
How can I calculate all the effects
   of simply my being with you?


        Newton defined things
         In terms of equations
        Took Aristotle and
         Swept him away,

        Einstein took Newton's work
         Made alterations
        And everything changed
         In a relative way.


Part of me wants you to make up your mind
   To tell me you're mine
   Or leave me behind
Sometimes it feels just a little unkind
   Never to know where I stand.

Sometimes I think that I'm asking too much
   My questions are such:
   Am I just a crutch?
I really can't tell if you're missing my touch
   And nothing quite goes as we'd planned.


        A teacher named Erwin
         A cat in a box
        Alive and yet dead
         Til observing reveals

        A genius named Werner
         Was always uncertain
        And sometimes I think
         That I know how that feels.

The poem got one of the highest reputations in the contest (the highest, not counting the little awards we call "chings"). Hey, quantum mechanics and relationships, these are two things we nerds like to think about.

*To pronounce this surname correctly, one has to do something like a zombie noise there in the middle. I encourage the reader, unless s/he is a fluent speaker of German (meaning, you could order a meal at a fancy Berlin restaurant without getting more that one or two eyerolls from the picky German waiter), to anglicize the pronunciation of this to shro-ding-urr. Otherwise one runs the risk of sounding really ridiculous, not to mention pretentious.