612660 action at a distance
shinji's ex-girlfriend really is in a coma, and it really is serious. He found out about it when he googled her name and stumbled upon her brother Paul's Facebook profile, which was completely open to the public and featured a status update that could not be more unambiguous on the matter: "Paul Mapa regrets to report that Arizona is still in a coma and thanks you all for your prayers." He briefly considers friending Paul, then decides that that might come off as creepy, seeing as Paul barely knew Shinji's name when Shinji was dating Arizona, and Arizona and Shinji dated for 1 month, 10 years ago. Paul used to call him "Mr Miyagi", which is what passes for hilarious in high school, I guess. Whatever, mane. Now Paul is fat and a libertarian with a homely wife and a young daughter who is way cuter than either of them. She must have gotten the same genes Arizona got.
Shinji closes the Facebook window and opens a porn one. He likes to m-bate to pretty blonde ladies with great big asses wearing superhero costumes that are ripped to shreds, as if they have just been in a fierce battle with a supervillain. These types of scenes are not as easy to come by as one might guess, but once he finds them, they are really easy to come by. Today he's not feeling it, though. He feels sad and closes the window after less than a minute of clicking. It might well be this Arizona thing. Shinji has thought of her fairly frequently over the last 10 years, certainly every time he sees a black squirrel or hears any song from Tricky's first two albums. Arizona was by far the most attractive girl he ever dated, but it wasn't so much that as it was the fact that she always seemed to be inside a famous movie -- not just one, but any famous movie. If she wasn't cracking wise or rescuing somebody or being rescued like C. Fisher, she was yelling or being yelled at like G. Rowlands or blowing off cool guys' middle fingers in the W. Ryder manner. Shinji glances down at his right middle finger: still there. He recalls that even when she sat on a bed saying nothing and not even smoking a cigarette, it was exactly like a famous movie. One night, he and Arizona and Arizona's BFF Percy all sat on Arizona's bed saying nothing and barely moving until Shinji could bear the terrible silence no longer.
"What is this, a movie? This reminds me of a French movie!"
"Shinji," she said, "I have no idea what French movie you're talking about."
"You know. The one with three people in it."
She broke up with him the next day. He was always suspicious of that Percy guy, who was too old to be hanging out with high schoolers. Shinji wonders what ever happened between Percy and her. He thinks of everything that could have happened in the 10 years since he went west for college and never came back. Percy loved Arizona, but she did not love him back: v. likely. Actually, she did love him, and they got married and moved to a secret, small village in the South of France, where they make their living as cartoonists and filmmakers and have a beautiful French-speaking baby: not v. likely.
Absentmindedly, he plucks a single eyelash from his cheek and inspects the follicle-side tip of it. Christ, matter is so strange! The average thickness of a human hair is 0.1 mm. If an electron were that size, the relative size of a proton or neutron would be 10 cm, or the diameter of a man's fist, and the electron's outermost orbit would be something like 5 km (3 mi) from the nucleus. The rest of the atom is empty godforsaken space.
Shinji steps outside his apartment into bright sunlight, throws his eyelash as far into the sky as he can, and puts his two fists together. He closes his eyes. Now his fists form the proton and neutron of a nucleus. Now the tip of his eyelash, 5 klicks away, is a negatively-charged electron orbiting his fists at an approximate velocity of 2.42 x 10^8 cm/sec -- just a small fraction of the speed of light, but way faster than any normal thing on this planet. Shinji is a living hydrogen atom. In this galaxy, he is the thing that there is the most of, which is, he has to admit, better than being Spider-Man.
One very queer thing he's never understood, though, is how an electron does not really move inside an atom. An electron changes position inside an atom, but it does not move. We say that it "orbits" the nucleus, but its "orbit" is not a continuous line, not like the orbit of a planet around the sun. In fact, to avoid confusion, we must not call it an "orbit". Forget everything you heard; an electron inside an atom is not "fast".
"An electron changes position, but it does not move." Shinji repeats the sentence to himself. Well then, he wonders, how the fuck does it get around? Teleport like Nightcrawler? Yes, that must be it. No, that can't be it. He remembers that an electron is not a normal solid object. It exhibits the behaviour of both a particle and a wave. It does not move but rather exists as a smeared-out cloud of probable positions surrounding the nucleus, occupying all positions simultaneously, but occupying some more strongly than others. It is a very beautiful way to exist, he thinks, though he is too stupid to understand it.
How does a wave behave, anyhow? Shinji used to hate the beach, but now he loves it. He figured out late in life that you don't have to be some clown to enjoy the beach. You can do normal things: walk, talk, listen to your iPod, wear non-clown clothes, think: "This water hitting my feet did not travel here from China, but maybe the wave moving through the water to get to me started out as a Chinese wave -- maybe, if I'm lucky!" Maybe his eyelash now is a vibration in China, with related oscillations in San Pedro, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.
Laws are just different in the subatomic neighbourhood. His eyelash, unhindered by the vexing solidity of the macroscopic world, could be tunnelling through walls and time to land on the face of a younger Shinji or an older one, a Shinji that really happened, or one that could have happened or is about to. He knows there is a fearless version of him out there, who continually collapses probabilities around him into the most honest and cinematic outcome; who says "I missed you, I'm really glad to see you again" whenever he feels like it; and who is blowing a stray hydrogen electron off of the inside of his glasses.
Shinji closes the Facebook window and opens a porn one. He likes to m-bate to pretty blonde ladies with great big asses wearing superhero costumes that are ripped to shreds, as if they have just been in a fierce battle with a supervillain. These types of scenes are not as easy to come by as one might guess, but once he finds them, they are really easy to come by. Today he's not feeling it, though. He feels sad and closes the window after less than a minute of clicking. It might well be this Arizona thing. Shinji has thought of her fairly frequently over the last 10 years, certainly every time he sees a black squirrel or hears any song from Tricky's first two albums. Arizona was by far the most attractive girl he ever dated, but it wasn't so much that as it was the fact that she always seemed to be inside a famous movie -- not just one, but any famous movie. If she wasn't cracking wise or rescuing somebody or being rescued like C. Fisher, she was yelling or being yelled at like G. Rowlands or blowing off cool guys' middle fingers in the W. Ryder manner. Shinji glances down at his right middle finger: still there. He recalls that even when she sat on a bed saying nothing and not even smoking a cigarette, it was exactly like a famous movie. One night, he and Arizona and Arizona's BFF Percy all sat on Arizona's bed saying nothing and barely moving until Shinji could bear the terrible silence no longer.
"What is this, a movie? This reminds me of a French movie!"
"Shinji," she said, "I have no idea what French movie you're talking about."
"You know. The one with three people in it."
She broke up with him the next day. He was always suspicious of that Percy guy, who was too old to be hanging out with high schoolers. Shinji wonders what ever happened between Percy and her. He thinks of everything that could have happened in the 10 years since he went west for college and never came back. Percy loved Arizona, but she did not love him back: v. likely. Actually, she did love him, and they got married and moved to a secret, small village in the South of France, where they make their living as cartoonists and filmmakers and have a beautiful French-speaking baby: not v. likely.
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Absentmindedly, he plucks a single eyelash from his cheek and inspects the follicle-side tip of it. Christ, matter is so strange! The average thickness of a human hair is 0.1 mm. If an electron were that size, the relative size of a proton or neutron would be 10 cm, or the diameter of a man's fist, and the electron's outermost orbit would be something like 5 km (3 mi) from the nucleus. The rest of the atom is empty godforsaken space.
Shinji steps outside his apartment into bright sunlight, throws his eyelash as far into the sky as he can, and puts his two fists together. He closes his eyes. Now his fists form the proton and neutron of a nucleus. Now the tip of his eyelash, 5 klicks away, is a negatively-charged electron orbiting his fists at an approximate velocity of 2.42 x 10^8 cm/sec -- just a small fraction of the speed of light, but way faster than any normal thing on this planet. Shinji is a living hydrogen atom. In this galaxy, he is the thing that there is the most of, which is, he has to admit, better than being Spider-Man.
One very queer thing he's never understood, though, is how an electron does not really move inside an atom. An electron changes position inside an atom, but it does not move. We say that it "orbits" the nucleus, but its "orbit" is not a continuous line, not like the orbit of a planet around the sun. In fact, to avoid confusion, we must not call it an "orbit". Forget everything you heard; an electron inside an atom is not "fast".
"An electron changes position, but it does not move." Shinji repeats the sentence to himself. Well then, he wonders, how the fuck does it get around? Teleport like Nightcrawler? Yes, that must be it. No, that can't be it. He remembers that an electron is not a normal solid object. It exhibits the behaviour of both a particle and a wave. It does not move but rather exists as a smeared-out cloud of probable positions surrounding the nucleus, occupying all positions simultaneously, but occupying some more strongly than others. It is a very beautiful way to exist, he thinks, though he is too stupid to understand it.
How does a wave behave, anyhow? Shinji used to hate the beach, but now he loves it. He figured out late in life that you don't have to be some clown to enjoy the beach. You can do normal things: walk, talk, listen to your iPod, wear non-clown clothes, think: "This water hitting my feet did not travel here from China, but maybe the wave moving through the water to get to me started out as a Chinese wave -- maybe, if I'm lucky!" Maybe his eyelash now is a vibration in China, with related oscillations in San Pedro, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.
Laws are just different in the subatomic neighbourhood. His eyelash, unhindered by the vexing solidity of the macroscopic world, could be tunnelling through walls and time to land on the face of a younger Shinji or an older one, a Shinji that really happened, or one that could have happened or is about to. He knows there is a fearless version of him out there, who continually collapses probabilities around him into the most honest and cinematic outcome; who says "I missed you, I'm really glad to see you again" whenever he feels like it; and who is blowing a stray hydrogen electron off of the inside of his glasses.