Reggie's Court

Every morning (nearly every morning) I walk to work, usually taking Hoyt or Gleason Street over to Park Avenue, and then south on Park and the North Blocks Park over to Burnside. I enjoy cutting through the basketball courts in the North Blocks, but I didn't realize until just the other day that I was cutting through Duke Reginald's magical quantum basketball court of unending possibilities.

Anyone who's seen the film What the Bleep Do We Know? probably recalls the scene where the Marlee Matlin character is challenged by a street-wise kid to shoot some hoops with him. "C'mon," he asks, "How long has it been since you've played?" Their "game" soon turns into a lesson on quantum possibilities, including objects being in multiple locations at once, reverse time symmetry, and the creation of reality by the mere observation of it.

Well, that scene was shot at the basketball courts in the North Blocks Park, the very courts I walk through every morning. In fact, most of the movie's story line was shot at various locations in Portland, such as the Goose Hollow MAX station:

The Washington Park station:

The Bagdad Theater on Hawthorne Blvd:

And the North Blocks Park basketball courts:

There's even a scene where Marlee Matlin gets out of bed and opens up her curtains, and after an initial moment of cognitive confusion, the "reality" of the view out her window snaps into clarity (possibly with the assistance of an Arawak shaman). But forget the shaman for a moment - the view from her window includes the Fremont Bridge, the tower of Union Station, and is, in fact, almost the exact same view as from the roof of my condo here in Portland. As far as I can figure, the scene must have been shot either from the other side of my building, or at the very least, a building right next door to mine. Yet I didn't realize this until after I moved in here, and randomly decided to watch What the Bleep just to pass some time.

And suddenly, the North Blocks Park basketball courts, the MAX stations, the Bagdad theater, and the view from my rooftop snapped into clarity.

So far, my reality has not included Duke Reginald or Marlee Matlin out on the magical quantum courts of unending possibilities, but several young men were playing there yesterday:

I've watched the film What the Bleep several times, and have come to own a copy of the expanded three-DVD version. I've often wondered where the film had been shot, and incorrectly thought that the MAX scenes had been shot on D.C.'s Metro system.

Now here's the intriguing part. Much of the film is about how our minds, how our intentions, create our reality. How much of my viewing of the film, then, came to result in my now living in the very city in which the film was shot, renting in the very building in which the protaganist lives? If I never saw the film, would I be living here now?

Or, considering reverse time symmetry, if I never moved here, would the film have ever been shot?

Or is that going too far down the rabbit's hole?