Monday, July 17
Butterflies flutter by
I came out of the steel and glass building an hour ago and saw a butterfly flutter by. It looked like a birthday-card sized orange, yellow and black creature, swerving and dropping in the heat. It made me think of that chaos theory fable of how a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon drainage can create a hurricane in the Indian Ocean, so then I thought of the escalating emerging war in Lebanon and how all those lives were being turned upside down half-a-world away while I walked out of a glass and steel corporate structure after nine hours of pounding my round head in my square cubicle.
I don't see butterflies anymore, it seems. Sometimes I'll spy a thumbnail-sized white one down in the prairie grass along the river, and sometimes I'll see even smaller blue-winged ones when we're up on a mountain trail. Down here, though, on The Edge of Nowhere, they're rare enough that seeing a large orange one flitting around above the corporate grass sends my mind down a trail of thoughts across the blacktop of the parking lot. It seems the butterfly effect -- more specifically, sensitive dependence on initial conditions -- is a good summary of my life. The trick is to manage the initial conditions to better drive the dependence sensations.
Or something like that.
I don't see butterflies anymore, it seems. Sometimes I'll spy a thumbnail-sized white one down in the prairie grass along the river, and sometimes I'll see even smaller blue-winged ones when we're up on a mountain trail. Down here, though, on The Edge of Nowhere, they're rare enough that seeing a large orange one flitting around above the corporate grass sends my mind down a trail of thoughts across the blacktop of the parking lot. It seems the butterfly effect -- more specifically, sensitive dependence on initial conditions -- is a good summary of my life. The trick is to manage the initial conditions to better drive the dependence sensations.
Or something like that.
