The State of the Nature

Take up a leaf, look at its centerline, and you'll see it's the same on both sides. Nature loves symmetry, and rewards balance. It encourages fractal variations, minor asymmetries as a matter of course, but where it encounters major breaks, it seeks to heal them. The healing processes can appear very harsh to our eyes, and swift.

Taking my son home last night after our play time, I turned on the radio, having forgotten that the Tin Chief was giving another speech. "Where is the thunderous applause coming from?," I wondered, as he flatly read and paused so that we could digest the wisdom of statements like, "We will conquer Mars, end entitlements, meet our energy needs by drilling into the earth's core, and give every deserving family a free Chevy Malibu LS." Those may not be exact quotes, but the gist is about right. We've departed from normal variation in human events, and listening to the radio was like hearing tribal elders dance with delusion, and humiliate themselves ,and us, by cheering it further on.

A few days earlier, the Tin Chief said, "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude." This man violates not just the state of nature, but the laws which make it. He upsets the spirits. I don't know the day or the hour of our tribe's demise, or by which of the many possible means it will come. I know nothing for a fact. The big party has gone on much longer than I thought it could, I felt these people would take us to bad places, and I don't know how to get rid of them without making things worse. They're as criminal as any thing which has ever lived, and nature will heal them.