Interiority

One of my favorite books of all times is Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. The entire book is full of nuggets of chocolate-caramel truth, but there is one passage that really stuck with me and became my #1 oft-quoted thing at cocktail parties (I think I have gone to more than one, so I'll stick with the plural). Ethan, talking to Dan and Karla, explains that random is just the word we use for a pattern that is too big to be seen. Like I said, this idea hit me hard and never let go. For me, it was a way to reconcile my belief in science with my persistent, preternatural belief in mysticism.

This idea and definition of random permeates my perception of the world. When I can find the little patterns, it encourages me. When I can't find the patterns, I simply chalk it up to this pattern being "too big" for me to see. Astronomy class very nearly killed this belief for me by showing me things and concepts that were so large as to boggle the mind; can a system this unbelievably large still be governed by patterns that are even larger? At first, it didn't seem possible. But really, once I reconciled myself to the existance of the fantastically gigantic universe, imagining a force even bigger wasn't really all that difficult. So, unabated, I continue looking for the patterns, hoping to solve a mystery.

I never expected, when asking the question "who wrote the music in my favorite commercial," that my answer would be "so that is why Jenny kept calling Stacy Merkin a vagina wig."