DOUBLE RAINBOW

I had the great good fortune the other day to see not only
a rainbow but a double rainbow, rare in this part of the
country altho common enough out West. As usual the
second (top) rainbow was paler than the first (bottom)
but almost all of it was showing save for a bit on the left-
hand side.

Rainbows are archetypal, i.e. it is easy to see them as
being charged with supernatural power. In Christian
mythology, the rainbow is God's sign that he will never
flood the Earth again.

Of course, 'archetypal' can mean different things to dif-
ferent people. As i stood at the door of the natural food
store i was working at, gazing at a rainbow over Troy
and wishing i could be watching it in nature, a man
with a cigar noticed me and said that he saw it while
driving past Troy so he drove into town and immediate-
ly placed a bet. He didn't say whether he won or not.

A rainbow is also an example of an argument about the
nature of reality. Consider:

A rainbow consists of three things: moisture in the sky,
sunlight, and someone to see it. Arguably, if there is
no one to see the rainbow, it remains merely the inter-
play between sun and moisture. In other words, if
there is no one to see the rainbow, it doesn't exist.

Sound crazy? Consider that in modern quantum (sub-
atomic) physics a quantum 'packet' is neither energy
nor matter until it is observed. Then when it is ob-
served--or more properly, measured--it can be either
energy or matter. What this says, according to my
limited understanding of the subject, is that nothing
is real until it is observed.

This has tremendous consequences in that theoretic-
ally the universe does not exist until it is 'seen' by
someone or something. Does that mean that the
world as we know it doesn't 'really' exist? I don't
know because the rules of the everyday world seem
to be different from the subatomic world and thus
i feel like Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand,
when i put my hand on my desk it feels securely
solid.

And whatever they might ultimately be or not be,
i still love and cherish rainbows.