Fractals

Fractal: coined in 1975 to describe shapes that seem to exist at both the small-scale and large-scale levels in the same natural object. .... Coastlines often represent fractals, being highly uneven at both a large scale and a very small scale.

 I've always loved the idea nature makes comforting, knowable patterns; petals on plants for example.Leaves on branches. Patterns of fours, fives, sixes. Predictable, knowable themes.

Fractals are comforting me today. An example of fractals is mountains being fractured by time, by weather into shapes. Shapes created in the smaller rocks themselves. Irregular, unpredictable shapes.

I'm believing both are happening in our complicated world. Grief feels like a Fractal pattern. Irregular, jagged, unpredictable at the same time as experts, the world has made a pattern, stages, feelings.. a map to help and at times, bewilder me. The map was right but when you are in the landscape...It's now fractured. 

Here I am on the map. And I can see this giant crack in the earth. No way around it. The map can't help. Because it's not on the map. But it's here in front of me. The feeling of sadness, without pattern, without a root memory, without a cause strong enough to explain this intensity but I admit, the jagged edges of sadness are slowing me down today.