Liquid, not Linear

We are on the mend, slowly, with bounces and crashes abounding. The younger ones have lots of energy and are ricocheting around the house getting on people's nerves, then suddenly they become quarrelsome or weepy and I remember that they aren't well yet. There's plenty of napping still happening, and loads of screen time. I'm up and on the move most of the day, but I have to punctuate this motion with rest time.

I'm dubious about the idea of the dying artist producing a work of rare perception. We just had the flu, and I couldn't bring myself to write anything all week. I could stare at a notebook or my laptop (when someone else didn't have my laptop, getting their germs all over it), and I could think noble thoughts that floated off into the ether, but the drive to work just wasn't there. Maybe you have to know you're dying to have that need, even in sickness, to translate inspiration into effort. Or maybe you need to not be caring for other people as well as yourself. Whatever the reason, I didn't write, I didn't touch my baby afghan I'm crocheting (probably just as well; the last thing the pregnant mother needs is a flu-laden gift), I didn't create.

What I did was lay in bed and read Jurassic Park, and there's no better sickday read, let me tell you. The movie is great, of course (and yes, we watched both that and Jurassic World as we lay coughing), but I prefer the book. I don't know enough about chaos theory to know if Michael Crichton is simplifying things to the point of fatuousness, or whether he's actually made the whole discipline up, but it works within the story. And note that Ian Malcolm does his most elegant synthesizing throughout the second half of the book, as he lays actively dying. Imminent dino attack really does concentrate the mind wonderfully.

The point that Malcolm/Crichton makes is that we think of chaos as a disruption of our linear progress from point A to point B, but in reality, chaos is a given. There is no promised progress from A to B. Disruptions are part of the fabric of life, giving it texture and distinction. The unexpected is normal, and indeed, nothing is more artificial than an unimpeded plan. The rigid inability to cope with disruption, or even the idea of disruption, is egotistic, unsound, unreal. Life consists of the disruptions, not the plan. Life finds a way.

Indeed, life is liquid, not linear. One of the ways we realize the excellence and beauty of people is in their ability to realign and help with disruption. I've had to cancel everything this week, and the people around me have fluidly filled the gaps, stepping to cover everything I've had to pull back from. (The converse is certainly true -- people reveal their brittleness and insecurities in being able to deviate from a norm -- but I haven't experienced that this week.) And perhaps next week or the week after, or tomorrow or in the next hour, I'll need to flow into a space left by someone else's absence, and through God's grace I'll be able to do that in my turn.

Until then I'll be resting in my little tide pool, hoping no dinosaur comes stomping along to jiggle the waters.