:: Thursday, March 8, 2001 ::

 

10:23 a.m. Here is something quite amazing, if you haven't seen it already. The pretty little design in the sand that you see if you've got your images working in the browser is from the latest earthquake.

It's all described on this website, but basically -- before you go running off to check -- it goes like this: there's a pointed pendulum hanging down over the sand and ordinarily you would tap it and the resulting, diminished waves would form a pattern in the sand.

All well and good, until the earth began to rock and roll last week, and this cosmic snapshot was the result. The intricate flower in the middle is the actual earthquake, scribing itself in a language we don't yet understand.

It certainly shows us many things, but most important it shows that there's an order in chaos that's greater than we can discern. I'd always hoped that was the case. Even though I know I'm but a mere ant in the anthill and a giant's whim can blow my way at any time, at least it's nice to know that the giant is an artist.

Today I forgot it was Thursday. For the longest time I stared at the calendar, stared at the top of the finder window, looked out the real window, glanced at the thousand objects on my desk and I had to acknowledge that there's no real way of knowing what day it is without either asking someone, looking at the newspaper, or waiting for Nightline to come on.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure that Nightline tells you the day -- the date, yes, but not the day. I haven't watched it in quite a while, mostly because I'm still pouting over the lost presidential election. They could be drafting all female fifty-four-year-olds into the Armed Services and I wouldn't know it for all the attention I've been paying to the political scene. It's dangerous, I know.

But there's no way to measure what day it is. You can look to the sun to tell you approximately what time it is and you can look to the stars to tell you where you are and you can look to the moon to tell you the portion of the cycle it's in, but the actual day of the week? Can't be seen, felt, measured.

Odd. I never really noticed that before -- not until I looked at the calendar on the wall and it looked right back at me. The numbers are there and the words are there, but there is no pointing finger inscribing a circle around the square and proving that here I am, square dab right in the middle of Thursday.

So, Thursday it is, then. Because I checked and I asked. Otherwise, it wouldn't be, necessarily. Which means that it's not necessarily "March" and I'm not necessarily 54 years old because what are years anyway? Just mere patterns in the air. Vain attempt to circumscribe the impossible.

Yeah, yeah. I know. I'm just trying to impose a little order on the chaotic here and now.