Reconcilable Differences
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Graduation Year
May 2021
Emphasis
Emphasis in Creative Writing or Applied Music
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
Program Director
Judy Halebsky, PhD
First Reader
Tom Burke, MFA
Second Reader
Joan Baranow, PhD
Abstract
Age does not always grant wisdom, but you can gain perspective and choose the frame through which to view your past. “Reconcilable Differences” is not a memoir, but a reflection, even more a refraction, seen through the prism of quantum physics.
The properties of entanglement, simultaneity, relative logic and the loops and fractal swirls breeding order out of chaos is not only an appropriate metaphor for comprehending a long, disordered life but a lens to see connections – and new dimensions. Though the essays are written in triadic shape, what surrounds them, what engulfs them, is the outside angle, the fourth dimension, the one not seen but felt, the one not truly known but understood. For Einstein, that was time, for me, it was a spiritual space and not the temporal.
This paper is presented as a series of essays and the intersection of what we think we understand and my own relation to it. Racism, alcoholism, love and the ancient sport of wrestling all connect, for me, and are presented in the same circular fashion (present to past to present future), not as a style choice, but because I had no choice.
Essays were the best form to contain meaning and event, but even then there was some emotional spillover, which I sought to capture in interspersed poems.
As physicists seek God’s secrets, they intersect with poets and philosophers. I am none of these, but I know what I saw. Now I understand how best to see it.