Center of the Cyclone

Entropy: A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system that cannot be used to do work.

Second Law of Thermodynamics: The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value as it reaches equilibrium.

Reality has its own ways of catching up on us. Most people grow old, some get sick, but in the end, everyone will die. Death: nature’s way of telling us to slow down. Perhaps Heraclitus was right - that everything is in a state of constant flux, and that change is the only constant in life. Perhaps.

It’s fascinating how things which had seemed so rigid, permanent and immutable at first, end up being the most fragile, unstable and volatile. What’s more fascinating is that things always change from better to worse. Of course, we might object that there are some things which tend to get better occasionally, but to borrow my favorite paranoid android’s words, these "will all end up in tears."

There is a way to temporarily avoid this, though. That would be to put in more effort. We usually exhaust ourselves and think that what we have now would last forever. We get tired, and our efforts eventually fall short of minimum requirement. When this happens, things tend to get broken.

In a universe whose motion has been preordained by deterministic laws, is there really such thing as freedom? If not, can there really be such a thing as regret, given that we cannot help but do what we are naturally predisposed to do? Are we really going to blame ourselves for things which we have no control over? How about others?

ODE TO BROKEN THINGS

Things get broken 
at home 
like they were pushed 
by an invisible, deliberate smasher. 
It’s not my hands 
or yours 
It wasn’t the girls 
with their hard fingernails 
or the motion of the planet. 
It wasn’t anything or anybody 
It wasn’t the wind 
It wasn’t the orange-colored noontime 
Or night over the earth 
It wasn’t even the nose or the elbow 
Or the hips getting bigger 
or the ankle 
or the air. 
The plate broke, the lamp fell 
All the flower pots tumbled over 
one by one. That pot 
which overflowed with scarlet 
in the middle of October, 
it got tired from all the violets 
and another empty one 
rolled round and round and round 
all through winter 
until it was only the powder 
of a flowerpot, 
a broken memory, shining dust. 
And that clock 
whose sound 
was 
the voice of our lives, 
the secret 
thread of our weeks, 
which released 
one by one, so many hours 
for honey and silence 
for so many births and jobs, 
that clock also 
fell 
and its delicate blue guts 
vibrated 
among the broken glass 
its wide heart 
unsprung. 

Life goes on grinding up 
glass, wearing out clothes 
making fragments 
breaking down 
forms 
and what lasts through time 
is like an island on a ship in the sea, 
perishable 
surrounded by dangerous fragility 
by merciless waters and threats. 

Let’s put all our treasures together 
– the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold – 
into a sack and carry them 
to the sea 
and let our possessions sink 
into one alarming breaker 
that sounds like a river. 
May whatever breaks 
be reconstructed by the sea 
with the long labor of its tides. 
So many useless things 
which nobody broke 
but which got broken anyway.

-Pablo Neruda

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