2002-09-18 - 3:13 PM

I've been thinking a lot about how things move lately, objects pushed along by friction, force, and gravitational pulls, shoved through hours and moments all by the same rules. Regardless of how unconventional an object may seem, a kumquat or a giraffe, it always follows the same pattern of predictability. Object x will fall at a rate of y inches per second and will always land in c position unless d is altered by a or m. The more we learn about mathematics and higher levels of physics, the more we realize how predictable everyday actions are, including our own human evolution and our ability to recognize the patterns in existence. A variation of the dynamical model of mathematics states that there eventually comes a time in which all points in existence come to arrive at one last point, called the periodic attractor. The points, previously on a linear course representing time, now stop at the periodic attractor and are propelled into a loop, a forever-repeating cycle in which every point is in separate equal intervals from every other point, completing stages of existence over and over with the same amount of space between them. This is the ultimate in predictability: this model gives time a linear shape until becoming one endless cycle of moment to moment and back to moment again. This is all rather like being stuck inside a dream in which you keep waking up over and over, thinking yourself awake while still inside this same dream. You go through these successions of events and, if you become aware of it, you may notice how predictable everything is and how familiar things have become, but by the time you have realized this you are stuck in a new cycle, mind erased, a keen spring-loaded yo-yo rich with D�j� vu. We are stuck to the predictabilities of physics just as we have stuck to these same cycles, what Carl Jung called "archetypes", these sets of stimuli that are apt to produce the same mode of thought in every person. Universals. The universe is subject to these rules, these cycles of thought and movement. X will always behave in the model of q unless b or y interferes with the trait u. What if, Claire, you wake up one morning and find yourself to be that X? What if you cannot discern last year from this year? What if everyday begins running together, a drippy watercolor painting of your life, blurring to the point where you are only alive to subsist? And how would you break out?