HOLLY NADLER
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Things are going to get a little freaky in the column this week. It’s about a Very Vineyard Valentine’s Day, or more to the point, The Alternate Universe Theory of A Very Vineyard Valentine’s Day, as physicist Werner Heisenberg might have labeled it, had he applied his methods. As you’re reading, bear in mind that the great Albert Einstein himself, patron saint of New Ways of Looking At Old Stuff, once dryly noted, “Reality is an illusion, but it’s a very persistent illusion.”
Lay the blame for this column on some of the weird videos that my new husband Jack and I have been sampling lately; the unfortunate outcome of having braved an Island winter without a cable hookup. Cue sounds of horrific screams.
Recently we watched a documentary, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Dimensions, produced and narrated by pop star E, of The Eels, as he explores the esoteric theories of his scientist father. Back in the 1950s, Dr. Hugh Everett developed a construct about alternate worlds that left other scientists coldly indifferent. But in past decades, some of his ideas have caught on in the strange land of quantum physics. He’s now considered, in some of the outer scientific circles, a god.
And what does all this have to do with A Very Vineyard Valentine’s Day? Here’s how it works: On the Island, all singles in every age group have some knowledge, biblical or otherwise, of all other singles in their category. Therefore, once you’ve found your own true love, a jaunt to any given event is going to place both of you in contact with others who have, however briefly, dated your inamorata. Sometimes you debrief each other.
We learn that this one was too obsessed with fishing to forge a relationship, and that one is married . . . to two separate spouses. Just the other day it occurred to me, via the spirit of Dr. Hugh, who seemed to be channeling his twisted mathematics through my psyche, that these long-aborted hook-ups were not a string of casual encounters going nowhere. Au contraire; in another universe, perhaps your mate is married to that fisherperson, whether happily or all too fishily; perhaps in one dimension, the subject still fishes obsessively; in another, only during that alternate world’s fishing derby.
Get the picture? Re-interpreted in the romantic sphere, parallel universes mean that nothing is wasted. We’re all with each other in different formats in different bubbles of existence.
“I can’t take this!” Jack cried, smacking both palms against his brow when I tested this Valentine’s hypothesis on him. We had just been out carousing, to the extent possible in the winter wilds of Chilmark, and he’d pointed out a svelte blonde in a beige wool dress, kicking up her high-heeled black boots to Abba’s Dancing Queen, whom he’d dated for a millisecond years ago.
I found myself speculating on what life might have been like for him with Ms. Dancing Queen if they’d gone the distance – better? Worse? And then I had a brain zap in which I realized they probably were together. Somewhere. Maybe in an alternate universe unfolding on the tip of my right pinkie.
When we got home, as Jack cradled his face in his hands, I asked, “Let’s say you’re at this very moment married to a thousand other women in a thousand other parallel universes: Do you think I’m the most fun?”
He shook his head still buried in his hands. “I can’t handle the idea of a thousand, I’m having a hard enough time keeping up with this one!”
But I was still hopelessly engrossed in the image of my Jack of A Thousand Marriages. “Wait a minute! Why should it matter what it’s like for you with all these other women? I’m never going to meet them! Or will I?”
It struck me as a possibility that at the end of all these simultaneous lifetimes, all our alternative selves meet for a grand afterlife reunion in which we run clips, swap notes, hand out awards, and compliment one another on our handling of situations that in another place and time we had bungled.
So this Vineyard Valentine’s Day, keep your mind open to the possibility that, even as you ponder whether your sweetie deserves chocolates or flowers or a cow pie, consider that you might, at this very moment, be married to everyone else you’ve ever dated or even flirted with on this rock. And it’s a good thing you’re not even remotely aware of any of these other holographic bubbles in space; otherwise you’d have a lot of Valentine candies to dispatch through the cosmic postal service.
In other matters, all this week at the Oak Bluffs School, the Parent Teacher Association and the student body have been collecting coins in heart-adorned cans to benefit the Blake-Burney-Yaskinsky family, who lost everything in a fire on Nov. 2. If you’d care to donate coins, cash or checks, stop by the school office and talk to Michele.
Polly Hill Arboretum director Tim Boland will give a winter gardening talk, Feb. 25, from 6 to 7:45 p.m.; focusing on shrubs that bloom from mid-February to mid-March.
Children’s librarian Jessica Bowers reports that Saturday, Feb. 13 from 11 a.m. to noon, the book club for grades 2 to 4 will enjoy a reading of Emmy & The Incredible Shrinking Rat, and on Saturday, Feb. 20 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., the middle school book club for grades 5 to 8 will be treated to Horns And Wrinkles. Pre-register in the Children’s Room.
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