Chaos
or
The Natural Way Things Are (or Should Be)
by J. Brian Clarke
 

We all claim to love the glories of nature; mountains, streams, forests, the wild prairie, the ocean, drifting white clouds. The stars at night.  What attracts us to these things? What do they have in common?  I suspect there are as many answers to that question as there are people. But after all the adjectives have been exhausted, mostly dealing with an abstract we call "beauty," I doubt anyone will have voiced the explanation I believe is closest to the truth. We seek out nature because nature is untidy!

Just think about that for a moment. 

A mountain skyline is a jagged mishmash in which no shape is repeated. Streams meander. Forests straggle. The prairie is an endless expanse of ground cover which has little aesthetic value other than that it conceals the dirt. The ocean is a restless, ever shifting entity of water which sinks ships, smells salty, contains large fish which eat people, chews irregular chunks out of coastlines and makes everything wet. Clouds not only resemble other irregular shapes such as islands and amoeba, at irregular intervals they cooperate with the ocean to make "dry" land wet. And stars form such irregular patterns, ancient man had to invent the zodiac to make sense of it all.

Yet despite humanity's place on this almost-spherical, partly wet, partly parched, partly frozen and imperfect sphere called planet Earth, there are people who claim the human form is perfect. They even go the extent of insulting the Creator by claiming we are made in his image! Drag yourself in front of a mirror and examine your reflection closely (before your noisome breath fogs up the glass). I guarantee you will notice one eye is slightly lower than the other and probably slightly larger. Ditto the ears. The mouth tilts. The nose is not entirely straight and it is too red. There are blemishes and pimples where they have no right to be. 

Now stand back and look at the rest of your unprepossessing self. Really, is that perfection? Knobby knees, elbows and all? 

To make matters worse, the male of the species had to invent electricity to power electric shavers to get rid of hair which has been redundant since the discovery of caves and fire. Contrariwise, the female spawned a multi-billion dollar industry to make hair "do what you want it to" (implying it normally does not, which is obviously another design flaw). Finally, what is so perfect about human feet? Human females are so disgusted about those particular appendages, they cram them into pointy-toed, stiletto-heeled instruments of torture which make their calf muscles bulge and cause them to walk funny. 

Now the point to this diatribe. 

Have you ever walked into a prize-winning, perfectly manicured garden and felt uncomfortable because you are an untidy blot on the landscape? Or looked at a picture of a perfect living room in one of those "House Beautiful" magazines and realized how the effect would be compromised by a carelessly open newspaper on the coffee table, or totally destroyed by the presence of a couch potato in worn jeans and down-at-heel carpet slippers? What about a plate with a half-eaten sandwich? Even worse, an ashtray containing a butt with lipstick on it? Ugh! 

People do not belong in such settings. Even manikins are aesthetically unappealing. Unless, of course, they are properly clad, planted in a politically correct posture and are purple-skinned to match the drapes.

Like most writers, I work in an "office" (a euphemism to distinguish it from the depressingly organized workplaces of most businesses). I have the basic equipment of course; a computer, printer, telephone and modem, a desk and filing cabinet. I have a chair for work and a reclining chair for reading and an occasional snooze. There is a small astronomical telescope on its tripod, a Kodak Carousel projector and a few dozen boxes of slides. There is a projection screen, a clock, and some pictures. There are shelves of several hundred books and magazines, a reading lamp, a tool box and an old Beta VCR. There is a white hat which was presented to me when I was Special Alberta Guest at an SF convention a few years ago. There is a shortwave radio, an old reel-to-reel audio tape recorder, and a box which contains my hiking boots. Oh, and there is a pair of snowshoes I have never worn.

Mix it all up, shake thoroughly and spill it out. That pretty well describes my working environment. The top of my desk; ditto. The drawers of my filing cabinet; ditto. Ask me to find something and I probably will, although not always (it is bound to turn up when I am looking for something else). I am comfortable here, although it drives the house-proud love of my life to despair. If she was a cowgirl, my workspace would be the burr under her saddle. This few square metres of clutter is as chaotic as the mountains, streams, forests and stars of the great outdoors.           

It is exactly as nature intended.