Ever since flora and fauna conjured themselves out of the dust
and dreck of this little corner of the Universe, things have been
moving inexorably toward complexity. There is a theory of
systems that says once a system reaches a certain level of
complexity it becomes self-organizing and will inevitably move
toward more and more complexity.
Of course our silly little planet is strictly a small-scale aberration in the
overall structure of the Universe, which grooves as a whole
via entropy toward ultimate uniformity—everything connected
to everything else equally. Perfect integration with no
differentiation. The big fizzle: white noise and inaudible
color.
Or it might all collapse if there's enough matter in the
Universe to create a situation of sufficient gravity that
everything returns back whence it came in a reverse of the
cosmic rim shot that started in all. Kind of a Big Gnab. Not
much complexity there.Naturally, to maintain a hotbed of complexity like this little
wacko vortex we live in requires input from outside the system
to support that ever-increasing complexity. And once the
system uses up energy faster than it can draw it in the system
implodes or fizzles, just like in the big picture. Food for
thought, but thermodynamics is not the present topic. And if
you'll just desist from trying to get that noose up over the
tree limb, I'll try to stick to the point. I'm not ready to
die. (And shouldn't that be thirteen turns on the knot, anyway?)Now, any complex system such as an organism or the multi-layered tangle of psychosocial energy we call a culture is
bound at some point to shift over into a chaotic system. When
this happens, the system changes radically in an event that
mathematicians studying such systems call a catastrophe. It
may be such, but all that means in math terms is that the system shifts to
another stable point known as a strange attractor.Lying in bed early one recent Monday morning contemplating
neither chaos nor complexity, but rather the intricacies of
the day ahead, I was surprised to notice an emphatic thump in
the center of my chest rather like a bullfrog about the size
of my fist kicking in there.Having no memory of recently swallowing a bullfrog, I was a
bit concerned. When it repeated itself at about twenty second
intervals, concern escalated. I got up and went to the
bathroom, fear twittering inside like a sack full of bats. But
the bullfrog either disappeared or went to sleep.I made a cup of tea and sat down to read. Within a few minutes
I noticed the anomaly once again. This time, it felt more like
a fish flopping around inside a fleshy creel. My heart was
misbehaving.When I took my pulse, it appeared that every time the fish
flopped my pulse skipped a beat. "No, no, heart. Nice and
steady, OK? Like this: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub dub. There!
That's right. Lub dub, lub dub..." Flip-flop. "No, no, no!
Steady, like clockwork. Tick, tick, tick, tick, there you go,
tick, tick, tick..." Kick! Uh-oh!A couple hours later, I'm lying in room C-1 of the
emergency ward, contemplating the vagaries and chaos-ward
tendencies of complex systems such as organisms. Room C-1 is
quite pleasant as these things go, I suppose. This is my first
experience of an emergency room since I was about 15. There's
a double glazed sliding glass patio door, designed no doubt to
isolate sound. They've wheeled in the necessary heart-monitoring equipment, and I'm now propped up on the reasonably
comfortable chrome-fenced bed.One contemplates mortality in a situation like this. Most of
my morning has been spent entertaining such thoughts. My
memory seemed to dredge up a lot of regrets for things I've
done and for missed opportunities. There's a lot of good
stuff, too, but I think that for next time I will edit this whole reminisce down to about one-third the length and just play it three
times.Leave out the negatives, eh? Accentuate the positive. I'm really grateful to all the generous women, generous
audiences, generous teachers, and exemplary friends. OK, maybe
if I cut out all the bad and keep the good, it will come out about two-thirds the length and I'll only get
to play it one and one-half times.I really haven't done too much that I seriously
regret. Whenever I have played fast and loose with the rules, I have almost
always had airtight ethical rationalizations close to hand. Without examining those
too closely, I think they hold up.What I am mostly aware of, painfully so, are all the things that I
want to accomplish and haven't yet had the chance to. Many
things would be left undone if the Dark Lady insisted on my
company today. But that's not what's happening.What is going on is this: I have a condition called premature
atrial contraction. PAC. This is apparently harmless, not a
symptom of anything dangerous, probably won't lead to anything
serious, and is actually not uncommon (they even have a convenient
acronym for it). Nothing to worry about. So I'm told. All
that's happening is that every once in a while, every few beats,
my heart fires a little early. I've got a syncopated heart!Now here's the really interesting part: all this thumping,
kicking and fish flopping never really happened. All that is
going on is that every so often my heart beats just a
little bit early. When the nerve-carried signal reaches the
brain, the circuitry up there creates the illusion of this
thump-bomb flopping.I'm told this condition will go away by itself in an hour, a
week, or a month, or so. It's just an intimation of the
impending chaos. And I'm released, none the worse for wear. Except for a few
small wounds where they tried to insert an IV. They had
trouble getting the needle in. All three people who attempted
it said I had unusually thick skin.But, I'm free. The sun is out. I've got a great excuse for not
going to my job. The equations of catastrophe have merely
shifted me to a new stasis point. Perhaps I am my own strange
attractor. The world doesn't seem to have changed.So I take a walk, buy some materials I need to help ensure
that at least one or two things won't be left undone, and go
out later to pay my respects to one of Aphrodite's local
representatives.And then, I get to work.
eez@inetarena.com