A complex need draws in the great sea of humanity, then converts and stores its activity into a coral reef of energy. The city seems to take in a slow meditative breath each workday morning, then exhales the traffic as the sun begins to set. As regular as tides, equally pushed and pulled by an invisible force, humanity responds to the subtle gravity that prompts and prods its strange behavior with little regard or concern given to the energies that flow like electricity about its varied circumstance.
A part of the current carries things away. Another part brings other things forth.
…
Typical workdays found Jill taking her coffee upstairs from the shop on the ground floor. Not today. No sight of her companion, she looked for a seat. Easing through the morning crowd, she noticed a woman gathering up an infant to leave. The baby’s smile beckoned and their eyes met. The sight of babies had been having an effect on Jill lately. She was a woman of a certain age, old enough to have life experience sufficient to understand that time is not a renewable resource, and young enough to still imagine herself as a possible mother to a potential someone.
The exiting mother had left an offbeat periodical on the table open to a political cartoon and a crossword puzzle. A few squares had been penciled in, but most were empty. Jill had seen the free publication around before, but since it seemed primarily concerned with Rock-and-Roll bands, bars, and interests far removed from her own affairs, she’d never bothered to pick it up. Mindlessly, she flipped the page and noticed a chess problem with the words “White Mates in Two Moves“. On the facing page, a short article caught her eye. It was titled The Thermodynamics of Ideas: Point A.
“What in the world…” she thought to herself as she began reading a few paragraphs into the article.
… Ideas transform a mental image into physical substance, sometimes beginning with simply writing down the words. Every novel begins with an idea, but soon evolves into a story that acquires a life of its own. One moment, the idea is confined to the writer’s imagination without physical form. The next moment, it has acquired tangible substance represented on paper, stone, or other material pattern. To the objective observer, it might appear that the author has created an entirely new form, something that had never existed before. But the artist knows that the image had only been hidden, invisible to the senses. The artist simply took the time to find and be able to see it. From the artist’s point of view, the idea appears to manipulate its surroundings in such a way so as to bring itself into existence. Not master nor servant. The artist is accomplice. Stone, paper, language; in whatever substance the creation occurs, the artist is but one tool in a dance of matter, energy, and ideas …
It was a proposition Jill had encountered before. The logic was familiar, but the style and presentation was different. Perhaps this article and her other reading had been inspired by the same source. Likely it was pure coincidence. At any rate, she’d given the concept a good deal of thought lately – that ideas can have power and exert forces upon their surroundings.
She’d always been a doodler. Absentmindedly, Jill took out a pen and wrote in the margin of the magazine, “B-A-B-Y.” Certainly, Jill knew how to make a baby. But, in keeping with the gist of the strange article, is the would-be mother the creator of new life or the vessel of a biological impulse willing itself into existence? Perhaps her idea of BABY existed somewhere in another dimension of possibilities and was somehow able to prod and prompt Jill’s own space-time in such a way to bring about its own creation. It would still be her baby, whether it was a result of her own volition, an accident, or self-created using Jill as the vehicle.
What was the source of this strange emotion that pulsed deep within the realm of her body and imagination? Could this particular spiritual hunger come from the whispered prompts of a larger life than she was aware?
She couldn’t do it alone. Not biologically or practically. New life is a collaboration that draws players into its process through a strange magnetism, like a gravitational force between bodies that orbit a common center. It would take two or more responsible adults cooperating in a joint venture to make the new life work.
Jill was staring blankly out the window to the streetscape beyond. Pedestrians and automobiles passing each other in a random rhythm creating a complicated interference pattern of light and dark. Layers of movement on top of the ghostly image of Jill contemplating her reflection in the glass when she saw another ghost, a familiar one, approaching her table.
She closed the newspaper to hide her written thoughts, stood, and turned toward the the ghost. He took her by the hand and kissed her on the cheek, saying, “I’m not late, am I? I’d hate to disappoint my favorite daughter.”
“Your only daughter,” she said affectionately, kissing him back on the cheek, having heard the joke a thousand times. He really was quite good looking, she thought, and not entirely disagreeable. “No, I’m early. We have a few minutes. Do you want some coffee or something?”
“Let’s just sit for a bit and chat. I haven’t seen you in a while. Did you enjoy your out-of-town seminar?”
“That was two weeks ago. I have another one coming up. But let’s not talk about that right now. Let’s talk about you.”
“That doesn’t sound very interesting.”
“Silly! You know, you are such a handsome man,” Jill said, and then added cautiously, “Do you think you might like to remarry someday?”
Her father looked at her incredulously. “Where on earth did that come from?”
She laughed, “I might not always be around to look after you. We all need someone to share things with, to keep us company.”
“Look who’s talking!”
“Life is different now than when you were young.”
“Ain’t that the truth!”
She continued, “I’m busy with a career. My life is quite full. And you’re changing the subject. Tell me about how you and mother met.”
“I’m sure I’ve told you that story a thousand times.”
“No, you always find some way to avoid it. All I know is that you met at a dance. Come on, humor me.”
“That’s not fair. You know I can’t resist you.” He looked out the window with a sly little grin, scratching an imaginary itch on the back of his hand. “Okay,” he said with feigned resignation. “One night, I met a woman at a dance, and the next thing I knew, I was married with two fine children. That’s really the long and short of it.”
“You must have known plenty of women. Why did you marry mother?”
“It was as much timing as anything else. The war was over, everyone felt good, the future looked bright. The whole world took a deep breath of spring and decided that the next thing to do was to fall in love, prosper, and multiply.”
“Okay, enough about me,” Father said. “I’ve told you my story. Now you tell me yours. How do you feel about this? Don’t you want to get married someday and have children?”
Jill felt herself shrink back into her chair somewhat, feeling to some degree that she had opened a door to an intimacy that she was not entirely comfortable with. After a moment’s pause, she said, “Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing!” Father demanded gently. “You are an intelligent woman, and you’re old enough to have given this a good amount of thought.”
Jill answered somewhat meekly, “I think I’d like to have children someday. I’m just not sure when and under what circumstances.”
“You might be over-thinking this – putting the cart in front of the horse. You go out and find yourself a good man, decide to make a commitment to each other, and the children follow out of that. Not the other way around. You don’t first decide to have children and then expect the right man to appear later.” Then he added perhaps a bit glumly, “At least that’s the way it used to be.”
Jill protested, “I’m not sure it works that way anymore. I’ve known plenty of men, but never one that I could imagine spending the rest of my life with.”
“Then you clearly haven’t been in love with any of them. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been thinking so much…Oh. This is making you uncomfortable.”
“I think we should be heading upstairs. We’ll be late.”
“I see,” he said, pleased to put the discussion aside. How did they get talking about this anyway? “Shall we go then?” They stood and began to move toward the door. But then he paused and asked, “Oh, what about your magazine?”
“Uh, sure. Maybe I’ll look at it later.” She picked up the DC herald intending to read the peculiar article again later. There was something oddly familiar about the article that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
thermodynamics of ideas 