Life Is an Interim Whirl

My work organization has been going through a long, gradual reorganization of our structure--positions given new titles, job duties changed or tweaked, departments organized differently, that kind of thing. Gradual, as in years. The first part happened in 2020, with the intention of more to come announced right after. Finally, after anxiously waiting and wondering for years, on perpetual pause, afraid to grow in new directions, some of the next changes are getting implemented; I recently learned how my position is changing, along with all of my peers, and we'll transition to our new roles in the next couple of months.

Today we had a big meeting to step into some of these changes. It included talk of change management. How between the "current state" and the "future state" is the "transition state." How we're dwelling in the transition state. Where things are uncomfortable, but where good things happen. Etc.

Long ago in this process someone called too many things in a meeting "interim," then one of us said something about "we're living in an interim world," and now whenever I'm in one of these meetings I get an earworm, the Madonna song Material Girl, but with the word "interim" substituted for "material." Her little hiccup sounds and everything. It's stuck in my head right now.

Anyway, it's not original to say, but it seems lately that everything is change all the time. And the things that have come to my attention as worth collecting the past couple of weeks fit into that theme nicely.

We are living

in an interim world,

and life is an

interim whirl. 

I love this portion of the poem "Self, Family, Society, Earth," capturing a girl's dialogue with her mother, refugees recently fled to the U.S. from the Vietnam War.

 . . . Weren't you furious?

If I'd chosen anger,

I would have overflowed

days, months, years

and still not alter

war atrocities.

Instead I chose you children,

vowing to educate

your minds and hearts

so you would know the result

of your every action.

Choices to not

pick up a gun,

glorify a leader,

hide behind commands,

claim honor, blame others.

You would then

begin to create

a different history.

What if others don't change?

Contemplate on yourself

until you're a solid anchor,

then ensure kindness to family

then society then earth.

All that from me?

You start,

pass to your children

then their children,

who might be positioned

to direct fury.

Such a wonderful approach to life, to reacting to change with a long-term view toward making your own. It's from When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lại. Here's what I wrote for my review.

Lai continues the story begun in Inside Out and Back Again, that of a refugee family trying to make a new life in the United States after fleeing the Vietnam War. She again tells her story in verse, sensitively conveying the experience of starting over in a strange place with nothing. This time she focuses on how hard everyone works to build up from scratch and all the sacrifices they must make to get any momentum toward better lives--something especially difficult for a sixth grade girl who is tired of always standing out. Lyrical and moving.

Secret Age

Our chocolate cake
spans four saucers,
swirls in pink.
"Happy 11th Pam & Ha."

I'm already twelve,
having aged at Tet.

Mother suggested
we repeat the last grade
to cushion first-refugee year,
now I'm always older
as if held back a level.

No one at school
knows my secret age
so I'll never again
appear dumb.

Mother has chided
if my heaviest fear rises
from pointless judgment
then I rank low
on the ladder of suffering.

I must remember
to stop complaining
to an after-war mother.

Perspective.

The book I read right after that, Homebound (The Icarus Chronicles, #2) by John David Anderson, had a passage that mirrors Lai's nicely.

Leo helped his father take the sapling by the trunk and drag it toward the hole, nestling the roots into the welcoming space. The tree was barely as tall as his dad, with a trunk that Leo could easily encircle with his hands. Hard to believe it would ever grow as large as the one that had been here before. . . . 

"It's true that the last one died, but that's the thing about nature," he said. "It finds a way to adapt. To overcome. It evolves. Maybe not this tree or the next or even the next, but eventually one of them will learn the trick to fighting back against whatever's harming them. It will survive, and then it will pass that knowledge along to the next generation and all the generations after that, growing stronger and more resilient each time. But not if we don't do everything we can to give them that chance. Not if we simply give up. I'm not ready to give up, are you?"

Being successful in an interim world means constantly adapting to change.

A few years back, I wrote a very short post titled Entropy. So short, I'll repeat it entirely here.

I tried out the Warhammer fantasy role-playing game system as a teen when it was new, and even read a couple of the novels set in its world. One of the things that stood out to me as strange was that the struggle wasn't staged as a fight between Good and Evil, but between Order and Chaos. As the Wikipedia page says: "One of the most identifiable features of the Warhammer setting is Chaos. While the forces of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy Battle are depicted primarily in the form of marauding dark knights and beastmen, Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is an insidious force gnawing at the fabric of society." And your heroic characters might hold off the forces of Chaos for a time, but ultimately the world is doomed and those forces will consume everything.

At the time I thought this was an odd and hopeless way of framing the world. Now, as a parent with two little ones, I completely understand.

I just came across an essay that wonderfully explicates everything I was implying in that thought.

Entropy: The Hidden Force That Complicates Life

The second law of thermodynamics states that “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of any isolated or closed system will always increase (or at least stay the same).”

Entropy is a measure of disorder and affects all aspects of our daily lives. You can think of it as nature’s tax.

Entropy naturally increases over time. Problems arise: your house gets messy, your garden gets weeds, and the heat from your coffee spreads out. Businesses fail, crimes and revolutions occur, and relationships end. In the long run, everything naturally decays, and disorder always increases.

Disorder is not a mistake; it is the default. Order is always artificial and temporary. . . . 

Entropy occurs in every aspect of a business. Employees may forget training, lose enthusiasm, cut corners, and ignore rules. Equipment may break down, become inefficient, or be subject to improper use. Products may become outdated or be in less demand. Even the best of intentions cannot prevent an entropic slide towards chaos.

Successful businesses invest time and money to minimize entropy. For example, they provide regular staff training, good reporting of issues, inspections, detailed files, and monitoring reports of successes and failures. They ruthlessly seek out and eliminate the sediment of bureaucracy. . . . 

Entropy sows the seeds of destruction. . . . 

A balance must be struck between creativity and control, though. Too little autonomy for employees results in disinterest, while too much leads to poor decisions. . . . 

We have all observed entropy in our everyday lives. Everything tends towards disorder. Life always seems to get more complicated. Once-tidy rooms become cluttered and dusty. Strong relationships grow fractured and end. We grow old. Complex skills are forgotten. Buildings degrade as brickwork cracks, paint chips, and tiles loosen.

Disorder is not a mistake; it is the default. Order is always artificial and temporary. . . . 

Combatting entropy requires energy. When you clean a messy house, you use energy to return the house to a previous, simpler, tidier state. This is why entropy is nature’s tax. You need to expend energy just to maintain the current state. Failing to pay nature’s tax means things get more complicated, disorganized, and messier.

We cannot expect anything to stay the way we leave it. To maintain our health, relationships, careers, skills, knowledge, societies, and possessions requires never-ending effort and vigilance.

Now you understand why one of the hardest things in life is keeping it simple.

Disorder is not a mistake; it is our default. Order is always artificial and temporary. . . . 

The question is not whether we can prevent entropy (we can’t) but how we can curb, control, work with, and understand it. Entropy is all around us.

Disorder is the default. Order is always artificial and temporary. We are living in an interim world.

Many things lately, it seems, evoking sighs of resignation and testing the fortitude to keep adapting, keep fighting back the chaos and entropy.

Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout Have Grown Since Supreme Court Ruling, Study Says

The turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters in the U.S. is growing fastest in jurisdictions that were stripped of a federal civil rights-era voting protection a decade ago, according to a new study. . . . 

"What we found was that these jurisdictions fell back into their pattern of adopting laws and policies that made voting difficult for people of color," . . . 

According to the Brennan Center, states formerly covered in whole or in part under Section 5 have passed at least 29 laws that have made voting more difficult in the past decade.

Sigh.

Good news, but I have trouble not focusing on the bad.

Poll: Most Americans Cool to Christian Nationalism as Its Influence Grows

About two-thirds of Americans reject or are skeptical about Christian nationalism despite its rising influence that's shaping education, immigration and health care policies, a new survey finds.

Some Republicans are openly expressing Christian nationalist views, which have ranged from calls for more religion in public schools to book bans and even suggestions that democracy should die.

This once-fringe ideology has become prevalent in some deeply red states at a time when the nation overall is increasingly diverse and less religious. . . . 

In five deeply red states, at least 45% of respondents said they were adherents or sympathizers of Christian nationalism: North Dakota (50%), Mississippi (50%), Alabama (47%), West Virginia (47%) and Louisiana (46%).

Sigh.

This once-fringe ideology has become prevalent . . . 

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

February 25, 2024

How religion and authoritarianism have come together in modern America was on display Thursday, when right-wing activist Jack Posobiec opened this weekend’s conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C., with the words: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”

Sigh.

This is my county.

Biden Effigy Beaten at GOP Fundraiser in JoCo, Drawing Criticism from Fellow Republicans

 . . . a fundraiser Friday night where attendees paid to kick and beat an effigy of President Joe Biden . . . 

The Biden-bashing antics were part of a Kansas GOP event in Johnson County, where rocker Ted Nugent and disgraced former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline were the main attractions.

A video posted by “MolonLabeTruth” to the far-right social media platform Rumble shows highlights from the event, which also included karate chops to blocks that read “Let’s Go, Brandon,” code for a profane insult of Biden.

The video shows several people at the event attempting a roundhouse kick to a mannequin bust with a Biden mask and “Let’s Go, Brandon” T-shirt. Another woman is seen beating the president’s face with a foam bat.

Kansas GOP chairman Mike Brown, an election denier who narrowly won the leadership position a year ago, touted the fundraiser event for weeks in official GOP emails . . . 

Sigh.

And don't forget the big picture.

Much of America Asks: Where Did Winter Go? Spring Starts Early as US Winter Was Warmest on Record

Across much of America and especially in the normally chilly north, the country went through the winter months without, well, winter. Federal meteorologists have made it official: It's the warmest U.S. winter on record by far.

Sigh.

A poem.

Bob Hicok

SHOW AND TELL

Sky the color of warning. Well not red but pink,

now salmon, it innovates faster than I have words

to shape into clouds on their way to their new life

in the midst of their old. There’s no stopping,

no point at which a cloud kicks back

and smokes a cigarette, they’re all process.

Between typing “process” and looking at the plastic

dinosaur head sitting on my “Impressionist Masterpieces

Art Cube,” the pink disappeared where it had floated

like the idea of a tutu over Paris mountain

and I became bored with myself. So things change:

how exciting. Go tell the river, tell the cow

in the river. How about this: “Red sky at morning, sailors

wear condoms.” That’s more interesting.

I’ve never understood the claim by men that condoms

take the pleasure out of sex, it’s not

like you’re wearing a length of pipe.

When condoms were still the intestines of goats,

a man set stones into the ground outside his house

in Ravenna, where I’d walk with you in the tomorrow

I hope is coming this summer or next. We don’t have to talk

about condoms or clouds at all, we can talk about the deer

eating their way across draught, no rain in weeks,

no way I’m getting out of this alive, or none of that,

just the ocean, that bit of interpretative dance

on the horizon. Maybe the goal was to stand still

and whisper across 144 miles that the battle had begun

by waving flags, one signaler to another. That’s fine

for you and your Napoleonic wars, but what if wind

is who you want to go to bed with and you’re alright

with the fact that she won’t be there

even as you touch her? This ascription of gender

implies I know something

about secondary sexual characteristics

that you don’t, but I’m no doctor of change,

just a fan, same as any kid in the bleachers

cheering for the boredom of the third inning

to be interrupted by a reading of Proust. Madeleines.

How yum. This sky has cleared, by the way, of anything

but blue, and I suppose now I could pin

certain notions of clarity to the hour and feel

that I’ve honored what seems to be time

or the inclination to put language to work

putting up mirrors around the house. Even the feeling

I had at the start of this sentence has left town

already, and as another forms, part of me’s

still waving at the last as the balloon slips away.

If I could talk to fire, talk to wood

right before it burns, in the second flames

tumble across the grain, in the instant

before that second, when wood’s still wood

but the match is lit, I’d have, finally, a vocabulary

for being human, alive. This explains my pyromania

but nothing else.

—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008

Interim. Liminal. Ephemeral. Incorporeal. Intangible. Tenuous. Permeable. Changeable. Slippery and hard to hold onto. Tending toward chaos and disorder.

Even the feeling

I had at the start of this sentence has left town

already, and as another forms, part of me’s

still waving at the last as the balloon slips away.

If I could talk to fire, talk to wood

right before it burns, in the second flames

tumble across the grain, in the instant

before that second, when wood’s still wood

but the match is lit, I’d have, finally, a vocabulary

for being human, alive.

That's the thing about nature. It finds a way to adapt. To overcome. It evolves. Maybe not this tree or the next or even the next, but eventually one of them will learn the trick to fighting back against whatever's harming them. It will survive, and then it will pass that knowledge along to the next generation and all the generations after that, growing stronger and more resilient each time. But not if we don't do everything we can to give them that chance. Not if we simply give up. I'm not ready to give up, are you?

Contemplate on yourself

until you're a solid anchor,

then ensure kindness to family

then society then earth.

You start,

pass to your children

then their children.

Create

a different history.

On and on you persevere. Keep working on how we can curb, control, work with, and understand the entropy. How to live within it. And, through it all, ensure kindness to self, family, society, and earth.