Scott D. McLean, MD

This week the journey from medicine to writing has been full of adventure. My new friend, Monika Maeckle, whose book, The Monarch Butterfly Migration, will be published in August, strongly encouraged me to attend the San Antonio Book Festival, which I did last weekend. That really got me depressed. There were just too many great writers saying the damndest things –  brilliantly, inspiringly, and using fewer adverbs than I. Having not perfected the art of being in more than one place at a time, I missed many great speakers, like Cary Clack, whose essays in the San Antonio Express News I cherish and clip for posterity. I did pick up Mr. Texas, a novel by Lawrence Wright. Just a couple pages in I had to stop and re-read this: “The tent over the grave bucked and billowed in the wind. Anywhere else you’d think it was about to rain, but there was no water in the approaching storm, a blue norther, bringing nothing but cold and trouble.”

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Goddard College is closing. Their MFA program was on my list of 8 programs to consider applying to in early 2025. Was I blindsided, or just blind? Regardless, I went back to drawing board, focusing on the Poets & Writers 2019 Index of 64 low-residency programs and obsessing over each program. Did I give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down? Why? Should I change my mind? Is my methodology flawed? What have I missed?

I have to give in to the proposition that this will be an imperfect process, that I’ll miss a lot. We neophytes are like that. Yet no decision is the worst decision. “Strike out boldly into the unknown!” said the explorer at the edge of the cliff.

And then a surprise. I took Goddard off the list – but added two more, one I had previously discounted because of location. I know! It’s low residency, so how did location play an outsized role? These “newbies” seem to have everything I value and have now risen to the top tier. As a result, I have nine LRMFA programs under the microscope. The serious work on the applications I will defer until summer proper. If and when I get into one and commit to the first semester tuition, I’ll name names and take the blame.

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The Transit Trail, our new class B recreational vehicle, is suffering through early childhood. Some of our friends are enamored. Others won’t step inside. We are planning to take it north soon, for finishing school, as it were.

This RV/non-RV begs for a nickname, but we’re not sure. It needs to develop some personality, some unexpected quirk or talent or attitude. So far, the best we can do is call it “TT”, which implies it is still a toddler and needs to potty. One friend suggests Ananda, Sanskrit for bliss or blissful life or blissful journey आनन्द). This must be considered carefully, as such a name, especially if emblazoned in Sanskrit on the side of the TT, will get full marks when we travel through Uttar Pradesh and certain neighborhoods in Bennington and Boulder.

And then there’s this:

This equation, formulated by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927, is known as the Uncertainty Principle. Per Caltech, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle illustrates how “we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle’s position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa.” Is that a wave? Is it a particle? Is knowing a noun or a verb? Depends where you sit in the stadium. I think the implications for our RV and our lives are perfect – we have an enduring status of not knowing a lot of things with sufficient certainty. “Such as whether you are living or not?” you ask. Good question. This could be a Sixth Sense scenario. But I pinch myself and no, not that sort of uncertainty. More like what will be the next sentence. Will Victor Wembanyama have another growth spurt? That crazy kind of uncertainty.

Let’s say we convince an artist (probably named Planck) to actually put the equation on the TT. The looks we would get! Folks at the trailhead or at Harvest Hosts would ask “What’s that? Hieroglyphics?” I’ll pause, give it a think, look ‘em in the eye, and confess. “Well, I don’t reckon I know.”

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Extra credit!!   Did Schrodinger’s cat have a name? Or not?