Quantum Questions
It feels as though every week we learn some new outrageous information about quantum mechanics that disproves (or, would disprove, if we could actually prove quantum theories in a way that didn’t get the various physics sectors squaring up to fight each other) everything we know about physics and the theory of relativity. For example, the most recent one is that something happening in the present or future can affect something that happened in the past, meaning cause and effect is therefore obsolete. I have known for some time that (please forgive this awkward sentence) time is not linear when not being experienced on the nice optimal surface of a planet that is orbiting a star in a more or less stable manner, however, I still can’t fully comprehend what that means. My existence has only ever known the constancy of gravity pushing down on my reality along the y axis of space and the constancy of time pushing me along the x axis of time.
Unrelated: Artists, authors, worldbuilders of all kinds get lauded for the use of their imaginations but I’m afraid their whimsies have nothing on the scientists and mathematicians who have to conceive notions that you can’t even base on experience or memory…! Doing equations with imaginary non-existent numbers and trying to make sense of things like photon behaviour needs far more flexibility of imagination than the cleverest Banksy concept, sorry (not sorry). And this is coming from someone who calls themselves an artist and has the second-lowliest of science degrees, a bachelor in biololomogy (at least it’s of the marine variety, which is very chic).
Anyway, we continue. I have been thinking about time a lot, and about life, and circles, and the idea of resurrecting receptors in our olfactory bulbs, and the nature of healing. My father nearly died last week, and in a desperate bid to make him more comfortable, I begged the doctors (not an exaggeration - my exact words were, through sobs, “I am begging you”) to take the naso-gastric tube out of him. They argued that the food was keeping him alive, that he would need it for a chance at survival. But I could see it was making him sicker: it blocked his nose so he breathed through his mouth, in doing so his mouth dried, in doing so his ravaged throat was irritated, in doing so it provoked his cough, in doing so his cough would not stop, in doing so he was not able to sleep, in doing so he was in rapid decline. Please, i said, just give him 48 hours of respite from the torturous thing. Even if it was his last 48 hours.
They listened to me and took it out.
He went into shock and became hypoxic.
He nearly died, and then, he started to recover.
He was able to breathe through his nose, so his cough lessened, and his throat began to relax. He caught up on weeks of poor sleep. That weekend, we still weren’t sure about whether he would live to see the coming Monday; by Monday, he wanted to get out of bed and sit in his chair. Now, he has ditched the O2 prongs and has taken walks along the hallway.
The Irish nurses started calling him Lazarus.
My father has terminal cancer. Eventually, it will kill him, if his kidneys or heart don’t fail before that. However, we have him back for now. The quantum experiment I mentioned earlier regarding time makes me think, did he survive because we decided to let him die? Is prioritising quality of life over chance of survival a medical treatment? Quality of life is so important, in fact it is vital, and very precious. I know this because there have been times in my life where my illness made my quality of life negligible. I would rather 48 hours of a comfortable existence than 3 months of being kept alive by tubes and suffering in discomfort and exhaustion. Is the will to live tied to the will to live comfortably?
And what does this have to do with scent, anyway? Not a lot, to be honest. In seeing the remarkable and baffling healing of my father’s cells, the cells of a 79-year-old man, I do wonder if sheer encouragement can open up parts of our body. Namely, our extinct (dormant?) scent receptors. My father’s “miracle” was not the medicine itself but was medicine-adjacent. Once upon a time I couldn’t smell galaxolide or ethylene brassylate, and now I can, and I can tell the difference too in a blind test (only on a good day). It is said that simply exercising in your imagination burns calories. We must be so much more capable on a cellular level than we know. (I would like to know how to best nourish my mitochondria.)
I have noticed that what I thought was the “old people smell” that people refer to is not the same as the “old people smell” that I am actually smelling. I only know this because I have been spending up to 12 hours daily at a hospital with various family members and talking to them about it. I distinctly remember a lady coming into the lift with her adult daughter and her “elderly” smell overwhelming me. No one else seemed affected by it, but it was all over my clothes for the rest of the day. I asked my brother if he smelled anything in particular and he said no. Not the “old people smell”? No. I asked him to smell my sleeve and he said there was nothing there. The same with my mother. What am I smelling? Not every elderly person has this smell. It’s just some of them, and to varying degrees. And it is not faeces, or urine, or anything that is a recognised bodily fluid. It just smells like the breaking down of cells, or something. I don’t know.
I have nothing more to say, other than the eucalyptus is still there on my father’s cabinet, completely dried and emitting a lovely clean scent.
I drew circles with water on the wall to practice my brushstrokes because I am renting and eventually want my bond back. My brother has flown home from overseas so I can spend less time at the hospital. I bought two different types of rose oxide for an upcoming exhibition. My father is okay for now, so I am okay, for now.
