The Birth of Chaos

The Birth of Chaos.

Every action has a reaction; energy, on any scale, cannot be created or destroyed, merely released, having been captured fleetingly. We are told that, but do we truly listen, do we allow this knowledge to influence our lives? Our universe, our planet, our bodies, all are permanently reverberating and reacting, interacting, changing, developing and deteriorating. We feel solid real and everlasting, we feel our world, the narrow vistas of city life, the broad sweeps of the country and sky, all are unchangeable, and inexorably true expressions of whatever unseen or, perhaps, non-existent, powers or influences cajole and shape the essential firmament of our confusingly simple existence.

We exist, thrive and destroy on one simple, untruthful scale, a comprehensible, easily computed door in the infinite wall of perception, sized and shaped in a cunningly human form. Perfect for us, our needs, our exploitative desires. But there is much we do not perceive. What do we miss? The extraneous… crestfallen looks on the faces of rejected lovers, the hurt inside a beggars inured shell, potentials behind shyness unwilling to push itself, the pain of the world we rape, people and animals alike.

There is a rainforest, vast, Amazonian in scale, wetness, biodiversity, hacked into loose regions by arterial rivers flowing with religious purity from distant mountains, contaminated by experience, by time, by life. A sturdy, aged, dark wooded tree sits alone in the crowded, bustling world beneath the deep wet green of the bird speckled canopy. An unchanging environment, annually different but eternally, in an epochal sense, the same, since liquid was freed aeons ago as ice retreated and people swarmed into new lands, since low lands were flooded and an ancient thirst was quenched, creating an insatiable hunger.

On a low branch, twisted and gnarled, behind the cover of a decaying cluster of leaves, hangs a twisted pod of life, a rough skinned brown chrysalis. Within this exo-womb, new life, new power, potential to change the world, other worlds maybe, is straining at the edge of awareness. Hunger sex, flight and fight; they burgeon inside the now twitching, cracking incubator. Unseen seams split and tear and the great awakening begins.
…

I wake from my stasis, warmth and feeling spreads delightfully through me, unfolding and invigorating the new damp wings that are cramped against my narrow back. Draughts of warm moist air seep and then flood through expanding cracks in my soon to be discarded skin. Light floods my preciously underwhelmed eyes, my senses are bombarded with smells tastes feelings the molecular world turned real tangible as I re-boot, upgraded and readied for action. My body, frail and new, soft skinned and released from this amniotic shell, reacts with all of the new-old warmth’s and colds and odours and more, remembered, vaguely, from when I crawled and munched but new now, dangerous in different ways, useful in different ways, interpreted with different mechanisms that I know intuitively. I fall, free, surrounded by food and danger, the only two things extant, for now, my wings unfurl and grasp the air, instinctively. Hunger drives me to locate sustenance, so I flap, powering myself upwards, above my temporary prison, which, now free, with my perspective, I am glad to be rid of, whereas before it was my all, my home. I feel air swirl and eddy around the beating tips of my curling, pummelling wings.

(The vortex of disturbed air spun away from the powerful, almost mystical, fragility of the wing. Betraying accepted laws, of physics and her suppositional cousin, meta-physics, the micro molecules click and clack, spinning balls on a three dimensional table aimlessly firing, targeted with ultimate precision, reacting gaining power exerting influence accepting easily, they join forces with the wind, amplifying effect. From inconsequential insectile origins the whirling sub-wind, so delicate, strikes the tail, extended and vital, of a leaping grey primate. The monkey, with its lumpy proboscis and short thick fur, propelled itself unthinkingly, zoned like the greatest sportsman, uncaring, to a new branch, seeing perhaps, in a colourful supra-human way, the odour of a potential mate, sensing an untapped source of food, some fresh, ripe fruits, ready for the plucking. His tail, erect and controlled by his unconscious mind, some hypothalamus of the equilibrium, is struck and suddenly, unavoidably, maligned by the devilishly targeted air. Balance upset, out of kilter like never before, since he childishly played in safe mother watched zones, his gymnastic ability impaired, he grabs hopeless and helpless, his grasping claws strike the hard dark wood and scratch ineffectually, his paws bounce agonisingly off the branch, and still all he sees is the food or the mate the pheromones still lure his eyes remain fixed on his goal. Surprised at the sudden deterioration of his innate abilities the tree dweller falls without comprehension of this new uncontrolled sensation. His eyes and nostrils still fixated on his prize, that which lured him across the yawning gap normally attainable, he falls still reaching out for that one chosen spot he falls stiff, and doesn’t even notice the firm, fleshy impact. Within seconds this new bounty is seized upon as though it had been expected and long awaited, natures hyper intelligence omniscient in the face of what may surprise those who have allowed themselves to become disconnected from nature. Ants and flies and beetles and worms burrow and nibble and lay their eggs and take advantage in a way we could do much to learn from. It is opportunism, like many of our actions, it is rapacious, like many of our actions, but it is pure, good, it is not exploitative, it is just, it is simple. These animals can act unthinkingly, with pure Buddha minds. When we try, unless we are one of the few rare people, Jesus or Krishna, we act selfishly for gain of that which is unnecessary which just serves to make us richer and does no real good for our offspring, for our only future. When they act in such ways, they act in a fashion that can only be beneficial for their offspring, for their only future, a future that many of us would argue they cannot even comprehend, they never act in a way which is harmful, detrimental to their environment, their world, even though, unlike us, they cannot comprehend the greater world, Gaia, possibilities of extra-planetary environs for us to run to, refuges from our ills to which they have no hope of escaping but refuges of which, if we could be like them, in some small way, there would be no need. They cannot comprehend the whole; we can. They can feel and instinctively understand their simple place in the whole; we cannot. The small crawling animals which we revile and misunderstand, which we fear for we know they gain revenge once we are dead, buried, recycle and rehash the latent energy in the still warm corpse as it stiffens. Over time the carcass vanishes, ameliorates which that from which it sprang, its’ purest form, leaching what goodness is left after the ravages of the insects and smaller micro-organisms, into the soil into the flowing waters that fall on a daily basis in this heavenly place with its’ harsh, godless, cruel and ultimately just morality. All carries on unabated, people may wander and hack at the wood and the foliage but all this does is place new pressure on the place, ultimately places pressure on them and their ignorant modes of survival, the world continues and the fruit that the simian brother, our cousin our father who art in this world which can be heaven should we so desire, desired ripens falls is eaten excreted and grows again, inside that which ate it, inside the ground nourished by the fallen tree dweller. The new tree grows, maybe it fails, unable to find a sun giving gap in the thick canopy, but maybe it grows and nurtures more, fruits and womb-pods of fat green caterpillars and maybe one day another monkey falls as his tail is struck unexpectedly…)

I glide through the dark roof of this world, breaking out into the bright skies above. Trees flow endlessly over mountains and down valleys, chop on the rolling ocean, to the indistinct, cloud covered horizon, a sea of perilous greens. High up, I hang, glide, riding thermals, drifting up and down accepting the whims of some higher, mindless power. I am seeking something, several things. I will know them when they come to me or when I come to them. A mate perhaps, or food… do I need to eat. I must. A mate. That must be it, so as I descend in a steady zigzag I scan the world with faculties that I cannot understand or explain. The wind the air pushes and prods me as I generally aim downwards, to the canopy, flitting across the sharp blue scar of the river below, seeing and feeling the presence of scents, molecular remnants of a suitable partner, a cohort, below. She drifts into my consciousness, perfect, willing, her smell her lingering presence tells me that, tells me also that she is below me, waiting and wanting. I head to her, as much as I can within the great currents of the sky.

Beating wings, fleshy full wings underpinned by bone, capable of fighting the arbitrary flows that dominate me, and intimidating silence alert me, warn me to a presence. It matters not if it is hostile or curious. Unsighted, I accelerate sideway as fast as my sleek thin wings propel me, acting, in a thoughtless, unplanned way, counter-intuitively, in order to throw what I feel must be a predator. I smell its’ intent. A bundle of sharpness, malevolent muscle and feather shoots past me, turning and braking with all of its might as it overshoots me, the uncaring target, aiming to survive but understanding on a basic level my place.

(This concentrated burst of energies fires bold oxymoronic pulses of pure energy – targeted randomly by the culprits, meaningfully and deliberately by some other power, by fate, or something – impulses of pure, rarefied existence, pummelling into the wet slit of river in the vast expanse of forest, transferring momentum to the heavy waterway, still cold from its birth in the high sparse mountains, having lost the heat, the vibrations that it picked up when it last ventured along this ancient path. The extra impetus momentarily depresses the surface, springs back, as all does, and the rebound surges blindly downstream, utterly imperceptible to the naked eye. Floating spawn and tiny silver fishes, water-boat men on the swirling surface all recoil and recover, fish in the middle of hunting smaller fish are momentarily upset but readjust. Further away, nearer to the unimaginable coast, it’s possibly pre-ordained destination is reached, without fanfare, an understated entry into human affairs. Two small boys play in pools formed by river-flow smoothed rock. They wash and splash each other, cavorting innocently in clear shallow waters, watched from a distance by their mother who scrubs at skins and cloth brought in from an outside world which encroaches on them in bizarre and unfathomable ways, occasionally damaging and corrupting them and their unfallen purity. As the wave, not tidal or seismic, just a wave, like that which our senses are trained to respond to and react to, flows into the timid pool it knocks into the low brown ankles of the youngest boy. He stumbles, reaches out to halt his fall grabbing at what is nearest and pushes over his unsuspecting brother. The falling brother, heir, a born leader, genetically pre-disposed to semi-conscious decision making and inspiring confidence in others, crashes head first into semi-submerged rock, bleeding, unconscious. His mouth and nose fill with flowing water as he faces upstream he inhales and though his brother moves him soon and alerts his mother with anguished cries he dies there in the red-watered pool. His life ebbs away as the current washes over him. All changes immediately. They carry the son away to his father and his people. They bury him with all the ceremony due a leader, ripped away from his nominal destiny, returned to earth and to what was his true destiny, if any man has such a thing. How can that be known when the flapping instinctual avoidance of a vulnerable butterfly ruins mans plans and thrusts the younger boy, frail, as it happens, who has struggled to learn to keep pace with even younger siblings, into this new position, an unheralded destiny his brothers life foistered upon him, perhaps his real destiny, perhaps chance and chaos and, that viral entity, luck? The dead child’s mother weeps and wails for seven nights over the mound where her first born lays. She leaves and larger animals move in to feast and take advantage, as the infinitesimally small organisms have for the week of her vigil, and he is returned to live, a semblance of existence his energy living on as it always has and always will. In the river tiny silver fish dart amongst the blood bigger fish follow trails and all feed and all are happy. The younger boys’ mother is also happy. She feels her fellow mothers’ loss also, empathy being a curse of all bright mammalian, a curse as so many seem to do all they can to rid themselves of it, to live free of its naturally moralistic constraints, the knowledge that that is what creates commonality which is the closest we can come to god. If we acted with the compassion our natural empathy decrees we would live with awareness yet clearly we choose not to, as do the violent chimpanzees we have seen stone a rival a mother to death, we would follow the creed of the Jain and sweep the floor on which we walked. The happy woman protects her son now, more than is usual, aware that his place is secured barring accident, she ensures that he grows that he listens and learns what he can from his father. He never grows all tall or thickset as his father, he never grows as wise or fair, perhaps aware, remembering the unfortunate end of his playmate, that his place is his through chance, more chance on top of accidents of birth and genetics and all that which set one up for the downhill run on uncharted terrain that is life. His father dies and he is in charge, years later, in his late teens. Their tribe, small and self-sufficient is OK; they know their roles and their hunting places, where the fish gather at dusk. One day men will come ashamed of their nakedness and, maybe as a result of this post-Eden embarrassment, understanding that they act and live unnaturally, upset at this, they act aggressively they feel they can and will have more, of whatever whenever, and they cajole and impress this natural follower, seeing and experiencing their alcohol and their tobacco and their colourful clothes, their knowing ways, he is seduced and he takes his people away from their place and he leads his people into contact with new disease loss of tradition and damage, just damage.)

I spin, powering away from my pursuer as fast as my ornately flimsy wings will allow. The bird comes after me, I feint one way, then the other. I sense a mate, continuation and completion, the end of the circle. I am torn between survival and survival, in a more general sense. I head down, hoping, following the thickening trail of bread crumb like molecules. An undeniable impulse drags me towards her. Wings fracture in an instant, tear and rip softly. I am impacted, swallowed by a reptilian beak, a hangover from a world that fate would have seemed to forsaken, one in which my ancestors struggled.

(The gentle impact rustles through the trees, away from the ever hungry bird. It disturbs a butterfly. She flits seductively and unintentionally around a tree trunk. Alighting on a branch, she meets her mate.)

If anyone who reads this wants to discuss ideas/thoughts etc, please ask questions or make comments. I'd love to discuss this...

I just want to say, this reads awesome if you use a really cool voice in your head. Other than that, I'm really not in the mind set required to go into the depth required, but I'll check into this thread later. S&F. PS - love the title

That was definetly interesting,.
The whole ''picture'' is alot to take in and process.

The existance of all, creation and life, death and continuing to be as a different form of energy.
And the effects of the life lived by each upon the whole.

The details of ''being'' twist and tangle into itself, pieced together in a very ''chaotic'' yet complete and perfectly connected fashion.


S&F

reply to post by WhizPhiz


Cool - that's understandable as it is a little intense... that was deliberate, it is meant to reflect the title and (perhaps, although this is a little pretentious) the nature of existence...

reply to post by TheSilverGate


Hope you get a chance to talk more about this - your signature tells me you have an interest in this area of thought!

Yes, I have thought many times about this sort of never ending cycle of all needs all, all creates all, all ends all, all needs all.
So one idea of conclusion I have put alot of time entertaining with in my thoughts is simply, all is all, and therefore we have, are and will be.
We are eternal energy, energy can be created but it can not be destroyed. It just is.