Clothes

Today, I decided (finally)

To fold the clothes crumpled on the chair in the corner of the room.

So that when my mom sees my room the next morning,

She sighs,

Relieved that I had (for once)

Eased her burdensome load.

So that when mom hands my dad his lunch, she has a content little smile adorning her beautiful weary face.

So that when dad comes back from work,

He does not feel angry when he learns I still have not made the appointment at the salon.

And so when I do, I do it urgently,

Making the last available slot.

Which leaves the next caller,

A desperate procrastinating teenager,

Who only wants to look stunning at prom (prom!),

Without a hairdresser to 'make her pretty'.

So that she calls up the sketchy little corner shop in Chinatown to get her hair done (by the end of that chemical cookout her hair is probably WELL done)

And in the storm and frazzle and action of prom (prom!)

Leaves her wallet behind.

Behind, to be picked up by an unskilled pickpocket

Who proceeds to call up his dealer

To pay his debt, and buy some more of the addicting stuff.

He calls his friends, 'cause why not? And

Proceeds to make a lame attempt at flying (getting high?)

Of course, one of his friends pushes too far, has too much, flies too high (they had not learned from Icarus)

He ODs, his friends either too smart or too far up in the stratosphere to help,

And dies.

Just dies.

Leaving a wife (an addict too, this time heroin) and sickly child.

The neighbor worries,

Child services come knocking,

The child whisked away to

Foster care.

Where she finds eventually (and very fortunately),

After years of uncomfortable loneliness

A willing and kind family

To take her in.

And because she had worked hard in school,

She went to some Ivy,

Became some famous business woman,

Ran some renowned company,

And told some people her famous story.

She thought it started with a man who OD'd,

But it began much earlier,

Much much earlier,

With a pile of clothes

Folded in the corner of the room.

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT: Step on a butterfly today, a hurricane rages tomorrow. Or something like that. The idea is that a small, seemingly inconsequential action can become the cause of a much larger, notable, effect. It’s a derivation of Chaos Theory, a mathematical field that suggests the sensitivity of dynamical systems to initial conditions can yield vastly diverging outcomes. Chaos Theory had existed for a little under a century before it became widely known to the public. Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist in the mid-twentieth century, translated the mathematical technical babble created by David Birkhoff and Barry Saltzman among others, to a relatable and understandable analogy. The beating of a butterfly’s wings, he said, had the potential to create perturbations capable of initiating a hurricane in an entirely different part of the world. This is not to say that a butterfly is capable of causing a hurricane. That would be simply absurd. It does, however, suggest an overarching connection between everything, and lends itself to the idea that the world is its own confounding variable. While seemingly innocuous, the Chaos Theory leads to a whole host of possibilities. Applied to physics, it suggests a circular logic for entropy. Applied to the philosophical facet of human culture, it explains a dynamic equilibrium of sorts between the degree of so-called destiny and free will in an individual’s life.

TLDR, The Butterfly Effect only propagates the chaotic, ambiguous reality we find ourselves in.

For more information on The Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory, read “In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems” By Stephen H. Kellert.