On Superposition

Meet Joe. He’s an ordinary guy. See him moving around his small apartment in the early morning, upright but not fully on, making a pot of tea, burning his porridge, showering perfunctorily before donning his workgear, kissing his still-sleeping wife and son goodbye, and leaving for the day.

Once in his car, more awake if not quite alert, he follows the route he has taken so often before. As he navigates the traffic on autopilot, he only half-listens to the radio, wisps of yesterday and hints of the coming day drifting through his unfocused mind, such that when he arrives at work, he sometimes asks himself how he actually got there.

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Joe is an electrician by trade, and supervisor of a maintenance team at the plant. He is a very good electrician but struggles in his role as supervisor. On clocking in, it’s all systems go; the pressure never lets up. There are incidents and accidents, schedules and rosters, telephone calls and e-mails, problematic personnel and shirty colleagues, all day long – the advantage to all this being that his shift flies by, he becomes one with his work, and as it expands to dominate his being, there is no Joe beyond the supervisor-electrician.

Joe tries not to bring his work home with him. Sitting down to eat with his family in the evening, he listens sympathetically as his wife relates the latest gossip from her staff-room, and laughs uproariously with his son about the class bully who got his comeuppance that day, ending up muddy and sobbing and the butt of everyone’s jokes, no doubt exactly as he had intended his victim would. Joe treasured moments like these, and prized Family Man Joe above all other Joes.

Every second Saturday, Joe is a hooligan. Not your knife-carrying, police-fighting, rioting-in-the-streets type of hooligan, more an aggressive boor, a loud-mouthed lout, an occasionally pugilistic – in self-defence only, of course, but these things happen – defender of the tribal honour. He dons the colours and meets the lads down the pub, where the beer flows freely and the slagging is ninety. Marching to the stadium, they dole out as much abuse as they can come up with at all passersby who don’t fit their bill – with especially intimidating vitriol reserved for suspected supporters of the opposition. Once in the stands, Joe and his mates lend their voices to the collective primal scream swirling round the ground – an outpouring of abuse, punctuated by groans of agony and delight, that ebbs and flows for two hours long – and are cleansed.

On match-days, Joe gets home late to a sleeping house. Having hung up his coat and stowed his shoes, he nurses a cup of tea in the quiet kitchen, no longer the hooligan, and a day away from his next stint as supervisor-electrician, neither actively lover nor father. As he winds down for bed, Joe is all Joes, and none, at one and the same time.

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A Quantum Metaphor for Human Being by Ciarán Ó Néill is available to order now