Entropy, the Musical!
Eight months into the most bizarre, stupid and pointless divorce in human history, something has changed. Having slogged through a therapist, mountains of repetitive and dismally trite pop-culture advice and a doomed-from-the-start new relationship with Command picture hangers (They don’t work!), one day the world changed, was different. Not better or worse, just altered, expansive.
As in the universe, which is expanding into oblivion as I write this. Nearby galaxies are fleeing toward nothingness at 150,000 miles per hour, while distant galaxies are heading out at 186,000 miles per second. Emptiness. Entropy.
This is probably yet another stage that has to be gotten through (How many are there for crying out loud?), and I’m only too aware of Elon Musk’s warning to us all that, “. . . entropy is not on your side.” No freaking kidding, Elon!
It’s dizzying, but okay, bring it on, I have coping skills. After some research I learned that entropy in a closed system can only be diminished by something from outside it. I am, everybody is, a closed system. Another chance to quote Virginia Woolf!
“There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so.”
We like it better so except when the whole calm, inviolate thing is hurtling toward extinction, Virginia. Then bring on those outsiders, those bird feet!
And so I’ve done it, the snow an etched map of mysterious music in a language of teensy claws. Strangers, far outside my closed system, are kind and welcome me to join whatever it is I show up for. They see the fleeing galaxies in my eyes and instantly kick entropy into a corner for a time. They are a chorus line of defense. This is a basic human instinct and really nice when humans are doing it for you.
One of them, far away, actually talks to me for hours and so alien is the experience that it takes two days of analysis with a friend before I stop imagining a nasty, elaborate hustle meant to get me to send money. But it’s no hustle, just an intelligent stranger as uninterested in the superficial as I am who uses the word, “zeitgeist” in casual conversation! A fleeting connection, but so reassuring.
Meanwhile I’ll watch and take care to join that chorus line for other humans. It’s really the best thing we’ve got going.
But WTF am I talking about? Perhaps only my experience, but at some point long after the devastating shock of divorce/death/whatever, there’s this sudden sense of absolute freedom. It’s as if you’ve been unaware of an invisible thirty-five-pound coat on your shoulders that just vaporizes. It’s gone and with it every constraint you’d accepted and internalized as a price to be paid for the connection now shattered.
All I remember of an undergrad “social theory” class is that both freedom and authority, unameliorated by each other, are bad. Too much freedom = anarchy, chaos and ruin. Too much authority = imprisonment, suffocation and ruin.
So I’m out from under a weighty authority and warmly supported by friends and strangers alike. But to avoid the inevitable drift toward ruin, I’m also cognizant that orchestrating absolute freedom is going to require some planning. At which I’m terrible, ask anybody. Plus I’m too old for this! I mean, how many octogenarians do you know who are now literally starting from scratch?
But it can be researched, right? Do send suggestions for reading!
The MR short story collection, The Seventh Magpie, is available for Kindle but nowhere else. And I, too, long for a sequel to TPDM. It's in my head. One of Taylor's friends has been a Selkie all along! What do you think accounts for the American (meaning U.S.) distaste for domestic MR? There just isn't any. And yet any soul on any street has stories.
Photo isn't old and thus a bit scary since there's no portrait and no attic. That is, I'm portrait and attic. Identity can be such a hassle!