and lightning does not travel in a straight line.” from ‘Chaos’ by James Gleick.

Chaos theory is the idea that behind normal ordinary life is chaos, this is how the universe works, unpredictable, random, but behind the chaos is an elegant, purposeful ‘energy’ that is barely knowable but upon which all things rest.

This is what I figured out: I’m kind of an oddball, an outcast but it’s ok. Everybody is unique in some way and that is the truth. Find your own weirdness and celebrate it would be my motto if I had a motto.

Benoit Mandelbrot was a refugee. Born in Warsaw to Jewish/Lithuanian parents, they escaped to France in 1936 ahead of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Then they fled Paris, with whatever they could carry in a couple of suitcases, and took up residence in Tulle, a town in the south of France. There they endured the German occupation by hiding.

After the war he managed to gain entrance to the Ecole Normale, an elite Parisian university. He lacked a formal education but because of his innate ability to solve math problems using shapes instead of numbers he was able to pass the exam.

He was never really accepted by his fellow mathematicians because of his eccentricity but found a home, eventually, in the United States at IBM’s research center in the hills of Westchester County, New York. There he was able to make his way among various fields of study, conquering none but all the while pursuing his particular vision.

The Mandelbrot Set, discovered in the late seventies, is the most famous expression of his unusual perceptions. Its infinitely unfolding bulbs and whorls have fascinated and inspired mathematicians and scientists (and normal people) ever since. Many applications in mathematics, economics, the sciences and the arts use this equation: Zn+1 = Zn2 + C. Don’t ask me what it means but click here for a sequence of 39 images and animations of the Mandelbrot Set.

I believe it is in the wonder and exuberance of differentiation that humans find their fullest expression, a recognition of their own unique creative self. We are not monkeys anymore. It’s an open question if we are humans yet but we are certainly on the road to somewhere. And this is exactly how I read a book like ‘Chaos’ - in bits and pieces, random and spontaneous, letting it wash over me and sing to me. Whatever I can understand is whatever is given to me to understand.

The mind flows come and go. I am interrupted not by interruptions but by turbulence in the flow which of course has its own flow and its own properties. On and off is a pattern too, although it may be unknown to me it has its own logic and its own destiny.

This is also how my life goes and this is how I write. If my brain is damaged (which I suspect) by modern society and public education and the marketing strategies of ideas and products from orthodox religion to breakfast cereal then maybe, like Mandelbrot, I too have a unique perspective to offer. I would like to suggest that we all do.

A spinning wheel offers stability and motion but it doesn’t go anywhere until it’s connected to a bicycle. A butterfly in the Caribbean can influence the path of a hurricane in North America. Life is not a set of problems but a continuous unfolding, like a Mandelbrot Set, of implicit possibilities woven into the fabric of the world. The world is not real, only a perception created in our brain from the sensory input received through our senses. Every snowflake has a unique hexagonal shape of infinite variety.

All these spontaneous comments are true and came through the wire into my awareness indicating a far greater, probably infinite reality implicit and actively creative. That’s the message of ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’ by David Bohm, another book in my library.

It’s a wild crazy world, to put all this in the simplest terms. Whatever perspective you employ is reality for you but there is also a commonality. Existence. That’s pretty fundamental and makes it possible to sit at a keyboard and write things. Or do anything at all or nothing. A period indicates the end of a sentence but also that a sentence is there.

Bohm writes: "Fragmentation and wholeness" (which is the title of his first chapter) "is especially important to consider today, for fragmentation is now very widespread, not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them." Kind of explains the state of general insanity that inhabits our world which I've often wondered about but it also clears the stage for new developments which we may not be aware of or ready for. New developments that happen because the world is wild and crazy (to quote Steve Martin) and emerging, every moment, from the same energy that created the universe in the first place.

Ok, these are big ideas, very philosophical, you might accept them or maybe you don’t, life goes on. Creation and dissolution. I buy a new car, the new car breaks down, turns into a jalopy. I get rid of it, get another one.

There are cars everywhere. I’m sure you’ve noticed. I have because I’m riding a bicycle and I don’t want to get run over by one. They are a means of transportation but they are also an expression of our personality. I drive a Mustang, I drive an Acura, I drive a Prius. They tell people who we are and how much money we have. See what I mean? We could all drive the same car if it was just about transportation. Henry Ford’s Model T was available in any color as long as it was black. But people didn’t like that, they wanted a choice, diversity, they wanted pizzaz. The study of car models would be a good application for Chaos Theory. No two are the same but then once in a while there are two of the same. You can check them out when they stop at the light. If you’re on a bike you can smile at the driver, maybe even say something. Then the light changes and chaos ensues. Keep your balance and move on.

What’s the point? Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s all Game Theory. Another high falutin concept developed in the early twentieth century. “Game theory is the mathematical study of strategic decision-making where an individual's success depends on the choices of others. It analyzes scenarios—"games"—to identify optimal strategies for competing or cooperating parties, often revealing that rational choices can lead to suboptimal, or less favorable, outcomes for everyone involved.” That’s according to AI Overview. It’s based on the mathematical discoveries of John Von Neumann, a child prodigy, who would often go to sleep with a mathematical problem on his mind and wake up with the answer.

That’s what I do sometimes. Not that I’m a genius. I’m just a crazy bohemian poet riding his bicycle to the cafe and hanging out with the people. Whatever happens next is totally spontaneous and random. I am only witness.

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