Quotidian

This word popped into my head this morning. It means everyday, daily, commonplace. What a fancy ten dollar word for a nickel thought. I like it. It is a word that gives lie to it’s meaning. It’s high falutin.

How about quiddity? That’s a great word and another q gem. It means the essence of stuff—an argument, a piece of rock, a person. It’s the whatness of something and it comes from Latin quid meaning what.

How about querulous? Petulant, complaining, objecting all the time.

I’ve got to stop this. Before you know it I will ask what e pluribus unum means and we all know what that means and it ain’t working out so well right now.

Back to worrying about the quotidian.

Chaos theory

I went walking with Izzy this morning in Ft. Ward. I looked down at the jumbled mess of leaves and branches and lichen littering the ground and thought “Chaos.” Then I thought, “What is chaos theory?”

Hell if I know but I had in my head all these crystalline images that I look at on Jain Academy’s website; beautiful symmetrical patterns in nature and I’m thinking, no that’s the opposite of chaos. So which is true? Do we live in the midst of confusion, and disorder, random and frightening, or do we live in a beautifully designed and ordered universe?

I looked up chaos theory when I got home. I don’t pretend to understand it, however, check this out: “Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focusing on the study of chaos — dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions”. 

It seems to say that what looks like chaos to the human eye and mind, might simply be a pattern which operates under different conditions. That’s cool.

Looking at one system alone with few or no variables may lead you to think that the world looks ordered and, therefore, is ordered ; but if many variables, many conditions apply, like for instance, rain, storms, weight of tree limbs, weight of lichen, slopes the trees are on, erosion because trees have fallen and new streams are forming. You catch my drift? You have many patterns, many elements, extreme disorder. What do you get? Chaos. But that chaos may represent a different order, a different symmetry that we can’t see. We are confounded in the moment by complexity.

Anyhow, that is how I amuse myself as I walk along. Holy shit—I got into fractals and recursions and a bunch of stuff I didn’t expect. Down the rabbit hole. The butterfly effect, snowflakes etc. Very cool.

If I sneeze in Butte Montana does that change the snow pack on Crystal Mountain?

Here’s an example of a fractal:

Going down to the river on a summer morning

I slip into my brother’s outdoor shoes,

open the heavy wooden door and head out.

Tardog in the lead, then Lucy, then Izzy.

Down we go over the heavy wet grass

Joined by a small grey cat who weaves in and out of our procession

braiding our motley crew like a mayday pole.

Going down to the river,

down to the river to bathe.

How glorious it seems to each of us

to be free, on this sandy bank of the Sandy River.

Later, regretting that I did not bring a towel,

we slowly walk back to the house.

My brother, the captain of this ship, greets us.

“Halloo,” he shouts, “halloo.”

He is my brother,

he will always be my brother

and this house, this river, these dogs, this moment

and all of the other moments.

They will always be.

The sun when it moves high enough, fixes us in time.

–written for my brother John—