Divergent thinking

The elegant shape to the left is called a Mandlebrot Set. I first encountered it when I read James Gleick's book Chaos some years ago. Chaos theory examines the way two things with almost identical starting conditions can wind up very widely separated before a whole lot of time passes. Click on the title, Divergent Thinking, for a lovely look at that in action.

If you would like to play with a Mandelbrot set for a while, do so. I'm not going to go into them here beyond saying that the shape, infinite in depth, reflects the rates at which numbers diverge from their starting positions when you do stuff to them. Specific math stuff. Discovered by a guy named Benoit Set, and named after him.

Just kidding. Benoit Mandelbrot.

Things that begin in almost the same spot wind up a long way away, when all is said and done. Brothers wind up fighting brothers across a civil war. Some American kid winds up as The American Taleban, his neighbours unable to comprehend it, pleased to see him in jail or, alternatively, not pleased. Hard to predict which neighbour will adopt which point of view.

When I was growing up I had five friends, we were inseparable. Everything we did we did together. I haven't seen them in years, don't even know where they are now. Don't hardly think about them.

I wonder what it would look like if I was tied to old friends by cords of colored light. The color would vary as I thought of them, or they of me. Most of the cords entering and leaving me would be colorless, but every now and again one would light up and remind me of friends I once knew.

Orange, he is still angry with me. I wish he could get past that, the anger is killing him. Perhaps I should make the first move, but I am afraid of him.

Blue. She misses me, she's remembering the time in Montreal when she said I was a sweet guy but she loved someone else. Do you think she noticed the blue and is reflecting it, or did she generate it spontaneously?

Black, dark black light. He is still lost, consumed by the demons that started eating him alive when he was thirteen.

Bright green. That one never changes, it seems, always full of life, full of dreams and hopes and confidence in herself and in her friends. Every time she thinks of me it's bright green light, the green of sunlight through the leaves, alive, exuberant. Intolerable!

Red, dark red, not like blood but yet like blood. Thick, rich, speaking of life and not-life, one diverging from the other so slowly. He is a dear, dear man, I think, unravelling with such magnificent dignity. I love that man.

I wish I knew where he was.

I wish I hadn't diverged.