From Natalie Diaz’s “The Quantum Theory of Suffering or Why I Look at the Moon”
I only know this small piece of quantum theory: a thing does not exist until it is looked at or measured. That is, the moon does not exist until we look at it. Suffering, especially someone else’s suffering, does not exist until we measure it in a way that makes it quantifiable or understandable to our own self.
Quantum theory: My brother and his suffering do not exist until I write it down, until I make it understandable through my own images of suffering.
Or, quantum theory: If I do not look him in the eye, if I do not write him down, write myself down, then maybe his suffering does not exist, or he is maybe-suffering, or he is both not suffering and suffering.
Maybe it is this simple: We have to look at the moon, acknowledge the moon so we know we are here beneath it, deserving of its light, deserving of the oceans it pulls, the lovers we reach for, the smooth spin it gives our earth.
Maybe poems are hypotheses in the quantum theory of suffering.
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