(Scene:  Mamie and Solly, married for decades, are weeding a garden.  Weeds are flourishing amidst sparsely populated iris.)

Solly (staring down in dismay): Garden is really overgrown. Weeds and flowers are intertwining. It’s a knee-high jungle. 

Mamie (on all fours, weeding):  How could all this have grown up so quickly?

S (pulling on a weed):  It’s all tangled…

M (standing, rubbing her back):  The house is wrecked.  We were busy ten out of the last twenty weeks.  No wonder we’re all tangled up. 

S (frowning):  There’s that word again.

M (waving her weed digger):  What word?  Wrecked?  Busy?  Weeks? 

S (looking resigned):  Tangled.

M (turning to look at him): Tangled?  Why are you focused on “tangled?”

S (meeting her eyes):  I’m entangled in reading articles. 

M (eyebrows raised):  And you’re mulling them over while we’re weeding. 

S (shrugging):  I’m just trying to understand them.

M (sympathetically):  Physics again?

S (reluctantly):  Yes. 

M (focusing her attention):  Knew you were stewing over something.  Tell me.

S (sighing):  Quantum entanglement.

M (musing):  I assume that’s particle physics.  Why on earth do you think about stuff like this?

S (seriously):  It resonates.  And because I can.

M (nodding):  …Of course it resonates, and of course you can.  Tell me about quantum entanglement.  I’m not current with physics, but talking may help you distill what you think.

S (slowly):  Well, under certain conditions in the universe,…

M (anticipating):  …and here we go…

S (looking inward):  …atoms and their particles get smashed together, compressed beyond belief. Their parts mingle.  They’re somehow tied together at the subatomic level, no matter how far apart they are.

M (thinking):  …Like friends are.  Because of memory.

S (surprised):  …What?

M (shrugging):  Friends. Spouses like us.  Acquaintances.  People who have conversations. 

S (staring):  Friends aren’t quantum particles.  They’re people.  We’re talking about completely different things.

M (shaking her head):  Not so different.  People quibble over ideas.  Discussions influence how they think.  Their ideas entangle.  Like in the garden.  That’s how people become friends.  Or not.

S (frowning):  Mamie, you can’t talk about people’s thoughts entangling like the roots of weeds and flowers.

M (smiling):  Sure, I can, at least in metaphor.  Think about how memory works. 

S (eyebrows a flat line):  …Memory?  We’re talking about memory?

M (assertively):  Right now, we are.  Old friends who haven’t seen each other in forty-plus years can pick up where they left off because of shared memories. We’re the proof:  We just did that with old friends during their visit to us for nearly a week, remember?  New discussions make new memories.  If that’s not entangled, I don’t know what is.

S (shaking his head as if clearing it):  I was talking about quantum entanglement, Mamie.

M (thinking aloud):  Quantum means something teeny-tiny that we can’t see.  Entanglement means somehow twisted up together.  Our brains can store new, shared memories, replacing less important ones.

S (eyebrows raised):  But in physics, quantum entanglement relates to two particles that share certain characteristics over immense distances.  Our conversation in this garden doesn’t relate to particle physics.

M (quizzically):  Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.  Maybe distance is relative in terms of shared memories.  A human brain weighs about 3 pounds and has about 86 billion neurons.  My neurons remember reading that.  Eighty-six billion of anything crammed together in cranium tofu is pretty complex…

S (hesitantly):  …which makes people complex because ultimately people think with their brains, then articulate their thoughts.

M (nodding):  And it’s true that people’s conversations shape ideas. 

S (thinking aloud):  And there are theories about quantum mechanics in brain function, though I’m not so sure about memory.

M (forging ahead):  Ideas grow like weeds.  We dig them up, examine them through conversation…

S (slowly):  …to determine what they are.  Or aren’t.

M (musing):  See?  Entangled ideas.  Isn’t it interesting how mixed-up gardens and quantum physics,…

S (thoughtfully):  …how weeds and flowers,…

M (curiously):  …how behavior of particles and conversation about ideas can all twist together?  There’s some other elusive pattern here, though.  Can’t identify it.

S (shaking his head):  Never thought we’d weed a garden and end up in this conversational vortex.  Who knows what we’ll talk about next?

About the Author:  Linda Lemery llemery@gmail.com welcomes reader comments.