Someone gave me a flower today. I was sitting on the quilt that my cousin Jeanine made, writing a poem about fractality while the boys sold lemonade to passersby. A man was lost, looking for a church event. If he had waited ten minutes, he could have followed the reverse stream of yellow, orange and blue balloons parading down the street. I directed him to St. Thomas, and on his way back from the event, he gave me a flower. They were handing them out to attendees, and he gave me his. A lovely gesture--and a lovely flower, with pink and crimson striped petals and a yellow-green spiraled center. Yes, fractal, right down to the merest circle of yellow pollen, worlds within worlds.
Fractality doesn't negate singularity, anymore than the body's form--two arms, two legs--renders us indistinguishable from one another. It's just the loss you feel, when you replace random unpredictability with patterned chaos. A little less lucky. A little less wild. But still grateful.
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