rain-drop metaphor

by phil on Saturday Apr 12, 2003 3:29 PM
prose

It's so easy to find suggestions in nature. It's raining outside and I can see a million little raindrops wandering the surface of solid land. At every connection between the numerous drops, at every size of a junction, the resulting formation is completely different. Drops land on an awning, stream to the lowest point of gravity, fall off the edge like a river, then land onto more tiles which funnel and distribute them along splitting paths. The different forks lead the original droplets to collude into superstructures, sometimes making new friends, sometimes flowing solo. The interesting part is that the environment with which the rain interacts was not intentionally planned to allow for the wonderfully different dances that the droplets animate themselves into over the course of their journeys. Every time it rains, the symphony is unique and serendipitous. The drizzle then makes me wonder about the drivel that other people set themselves into. The human world has got to be gargantuanly more complex than rain, so then why do people think that their best bet is to draw a single straight line from here to their objectives. The best path has got to be the one that w(a|o)nders. That is, unless you prefer marching to dancing.

UPDATE: if you need a single smooth line, at least choose an arc or a spiral.

UPDATE2: or "multilayered perfect circlez placed upon each other" as yoshitama refers to spirals