I'm watching the neighbor's pigeons swoop and flurry through the piece of sky visible outside the glass door to the deck. There must be 20 or more, but they've separated into two uneven groups; one group goes by, then the next, followed by a lone straggler that doesn't seem to know which group it belongs to. The smart money's on that one getting eaten first by the local hawk -- but you never know.
Haven't I read somewhere that chaos theorists like to watch the non-pattern pattern of bird flocks in flight? I love chaos theory. It, like quantum physics, is something I understand intuitively but inarticulately; and both lend themselves beautifully to all sorts of wacky and inappropriate applications to completely unrelated fields. Like the paranormal, ghosts, and ESP, for instance. It's probably good that I decided to degree in literature instead of science; I surely would have been drummed out of the mainstream scientific field by now. I'd have to hang out with ghost hunters, or von Daniken and that UFO guy with the hair thing going on -- can't remember his name now, but he looks like he'd be fun to be around -- and the "real" scientists would be ostracizing us and making fun of us. But I bet I know who enjoys their work more. Hmm, maybe I should have pursued that science degree, after all.
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