Alternate Ithaca Tom.(life choices)(Brief Article)

Weiser is a roving storyteller. Three years ago he quit his job as a database engineer and set out in a Volkswagen van to find himself. He proved elusive.

Some quantum physicists theorize that every event produces all possible results. Flip a coin, and it comes up heads and tails. The universe splits in two, containing one and the other. Since there are myriad quantum events in life, there are myriad universes, all real even if we can't perceive them.

The idea is fun. Except when you are unexpectedly visited by an alternate reality. This happened to me, driving through Ithaca, New York, last August en route to a summer tai chi camp. Ithaca is home to Cornell University, high above Lake Cayuga. Funky old cottages cling to the hillsides like goats. Dreadlocked hippies carrying babies of every ethnic heritage wander in and out of shops named Hemp Unlimited or It Takes a Village. Perhaps the quirk of geography that produces a microclimate of hippies also acts as receiver of alternate time lines. Maybe it bends them the way mountains bend radio waves.

Whatever, I suddenly saw my alternate life. I thought, "I was supposed to go to Cornell. I would have studied animal behavior. I'd be a professor, teaching evolutionary biology. I'd have an Asian wife and several well-behaved kids. I wouldn't be assailed by doubts, adrift and useless. The university would give my life structure and variety, and during summers I would go to exotic locales for fieldwork."

I was heartbroken over my loss. Alternate Ithaca Tom had a much better life. He was certain in his work. Society affirmed his choices. I wished I had that kind of protective structure, an exoskeleton to hold in the anomalous movements of my soul that even at that moment propelled me away toward tai chi. Here were the buildings where I attended classes. Here was the gorge I used to explore by night in altered states. Here were young women who looked like the wife I'd met as an undergrad. Alas, the time lines had diverged. I'd gotten off life's train at the wrong stop.

At camp, Ithaca Tom haunted me. I liked the communal meals and activities. You don't have to figure out what you're supposed to do at a camp. You do whatever is on the schedule. I laughed a lot at camp, made jokes. Which is probably why our teacher, Maggie, having scheduled an hour of meditation before breakfast, picked me to wander the halls at 6:20 a.m. singing wake-up songs. Given the choice of being annoyed at some jerk singing outside my door at dawn, or actually doing the ...