Optimism in the Face of Chaos

trying to resist entropy is what keeps us going?

futile it may seem

a pointless endeavor like your actions will cease to mean anything

and yes our lives will end, but

humans create order we can’t bear the thought

of disorder in a world where daily life is a gray monotony

and we will find an answer one day

it’s pointless to abandon hope

heat death is inevitable, but

it is all-consuming to search for meaning and order

and the struggle to resist is human

it’s pointless to abandon hope

apathy would be a mistake

is the only solution keep going even if your contributions will be lost?

humanity oh, gentle humanity!

is doomed to persist, to learn what we can until time runs out!

we will end one day

we know that we will

and we may never find an answer.

see past these distractions,

why it is important to keep living anyway.

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Never Gets Easier

Look up and down the sandy beachside lake!

Around you, children laugh, intent to make

Small castles out of ever falling sand

Which evening tides will wash away as planned

Look up and down the careful garden row!

Where neatly planted stones and flowers grow

But little do its planters seem aware

Their efforts nature soon will rend and tear

It’s only human, making structure, but

The ocean crashes down, the artwork is gone

The weeds come over walls that they find in their way

Our gentle nature, destructive and scary and us

Devolving to nought but a nuisance which gets in the way

After all, it’s not natural to have things that make too much sense

Chaos, then heat death and entropy murmuring poetry

And the words go

“No.”

“No more.”

And there isn’t any sense in it, is there?

We work

And work

And work

And what do we get for it?

Burnout.

The inability to do any more work.

Our own private sort of heat death that nobody witnesses.

Or at least that’s how it goes if you’d like to go along with entropy.

When you have this revelation, it’s only natural to give up hope.

To fall into the cycle of thinking

That nothing matters

You’ll never make the impact you want to

Your life; repetitive but without meaningful order.

So, you give up, and let it fall into disrepair.

There’s endless variations on monotony.

It would be so easy.

There is another path, though.

We have to do more work for it.

Add more of our own energy.

Resist the thing we call entropy.

It’s so unlikely that you got to this moment

(Statistically speaking)

That you might as well make the most of it.

Time keeps going no matter what you decide

So resist while yet you can.

For even though the sandcastle falls

It’s the time you spend building it that matters

It’s your determination to rebuild it when the waves knock it down

If the stone walls eventually crack and decay

Well, were you not enjoying the garden that day?

Life only seems pointless if you think it’ll happen that way

So heat death lurks behind a trillion years

And chaos, pudding, lack of meaning, tears

Are always in the background, never gone

Yet still each day the heavens dawn

And still the actors do rehearse

And so with eyes anew

Look up and down the sparkling universe!

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The first poem can be read as two separate poems or as a combined poem; each offers a

commentary on the whole.

The second poem is experimental and intended to represent predictability in life, a fall into

unpredictability (represented here as burnout, or a carefully ordered creation becoming

disordered) and the realization that life may be unpredictable, but that’s part of what makes it

worth living – and the finding of comfort and certain patterns among the chaos.

The meter is used to convey this along with the words; the first two stanzas are written in strict

heroic meter (rhymed iambic pentameter). As the chaotic part unfolds, the rhyme scheme is lost.

The last iamb of the line is replaced by an anapest, then the last two iambs, and so on until the

meter has switched to anapestic pentameter, but we are not allowed to remain here for long; the

next line quickly switches to dactylic pentameter, after which we are plunged into chaos

(represented here as free verse). As the speaker becomes more comfortable with their world, the

meter returns to iambs and there is some sense of a rhyme scheme, yet the number of feet is

changing and different than what we started with. This too represents chaos; as chaotic systems

may never return to their initial conditions, but sometimes exhibit predictable behavior within

chaos

Link to Piece

Order and chaos co-exist in the world through natural phenomena and human nature. Without one, there is no proper balance and it becomes toxic. For example, in the illustration, there is order displayed on the left side with laws, gravitational pull in the solar system, phases of the moon and peace. Order is when there is structure that is being maintained and everyone is mostly happy. On the other side, there is a clear depiction of chaos. Tornadoes, dice, entropy and chaos theory all relate to probability and chance of randomness. We cannot predict the path of a tornado, just like we cannot predict if we win the lottery. Thus, we, as humans, exist in a world that is both predictable and unpredictable at the same time – striving to keep it balanced. Even if there are many unknowns in the world, we are still trying to maintain order through laws. There are governments being established, to keep people satisfied and their needs met. Therefore, order and chaos are necessary for our world to continue.

“How come your rules are so defined”

“No, you just try to ignore mine”

The orderly tries to guide the blind

But Chaos laughs, “No, you’re just a few paces behind”

What’s the point of law and banter

When half the question makes up its own answers

“Coexist? Maybe?”

It’s a staring contest -- over once one twitches

The flutter that flips fate’s switches

Give it a flick if you want, understand the risk

Only one person wins the gamble, spin the disk

“Fine,” one says

But not fine like a vase after the apology

No take-backs, let’s keep it our policy

“Yeah, fine,” a smile could file for perjury

Simple things dictate the wildest and the worst

“Hope this truce lasts an eternity, we’re well rehearsed”

No, that’s right, good things only last so long

I know, but I can’t rewrite a story so long gone

The end: your hopes are short-lived

Now all the money’s suspended in air

No one’s going anywhere

“Is there really any more work to be done here?”

No, there isn’t, I warned you it was severe

But you can’t leave, your condition’s grievous

Live off borrowed time, you know one wins quicker

You don’t play for order when chaos is the dealer

The poem is about how order and chaos can’t coexist for eternity; one always beats out

the other. I set it up so that chaos and order are talking to each other (marked by the quotes)

while a counselor tries to guide them, even though he knows their fate is inevitable. Due to the

second law of thermodynamics, entropy will eventually cause energy to be evenly distributed. I

tried to fit in a lot of clever references to what we’ve been talking about in class, like not being

able to put a vase back together perfectly once it’s broken, and how no more work can be done

because there's no more energy to be displaced. By the way, just wanted to mention the second

to last line is a reference to rapper MF DOOM.

Oh, what a funny world we’re living in!

I used to dream it could be boxed and pinned

A simple law, equation pure and grand,

The math would tell me how it all was planned

The human mind, a pattern on a leaf -

The symphony of life laid bare to see.

The pillars of our knowledge would reign chief.

A formula could set the whole world free.

A star’s demise, or proton’s split

Allow us to predict their fate...

But how could I foresee if on

my birthday it’ll precipitate?

And in our daily life, we unquestionably find,

These equations erode, and reason slips away.

Predicting a rainstorm, we become snow-blind.

Blinds are pulled, and truth is lost in gray.

Ragged lightning spires suddenly, and I shiver

subtly. I stir a storm, far and unaware.

I try to measure a coast, but always off by a sliver.

Its crags curve and collapse, and drag everywhere

with Chaos. I see beauty in its bends,

nature’s tangled threads where beginnings end.

Chaos looms vast and easily swallows scale,

but stare deeply into its formless void,

and you'll see its shape in the

landscape. God made chaos distant, abstract enough

to pass for wildness, but a hidden law

may creep behind,

where a fern's infinitely rugged edge precedes a thousand copies of itself,

or where a universe of color was created from nothingness.

Is chaos absolute? Can God make a rock he cannot lift?

Or is logic the first stone he laid?

God holds the equation but left us an inequality:

The rate of disorder will always rise as time slips forward.

In the midst of this entropy, we must turn to Him for the patterns and order,

Because only God can tame Chaos.

This poem describes how although the world may seem predetermined, the future is practically

unpredictable, and small actions can have large consequences. It uses real examples from

nature to demonstrate this, like the difficulty of determining the weather, or a variation of the

“butterfly effect” where the speaker’s shiver caused a storm. The famous Coastline Paradox is

another example, where it’s impossible to measure a country’s coastline exactly since the

coasts are essentially fractals. This means that the coastline is infinite and the measured value

depends on the length of your ruler. However, the poem maintains that there is an inherent

order in things, just one that we humans may not be able to see. This order is found through

God, and it also manifests in nature. The poem uses the example of self-similarity, where a fern

already resembles a fractal with its rough edges, but contains many small copies of itself. The

universe forming is used as another example, an impossibility if chaos was always increasing –

it must instead be a result of God creating the ordered world we live in. Perceiving this order as

humans in this world therefore requires a closer connection to God.

The poem also uses meter and rhyme to show a transition from an ordered world to a chaotic

one, and a classical one to a romantic one. The idea of using an equation to describe a

predetermined reality is a very classical one, and it requires accepting classical physics as true.

An example of the Romantic sublime is seen in the concept of Chaos as a “vast” and “formless”

entity. The poem starts in iambic pentameter, then mixes it up with iambic tetrameter. The next

stanza and a half is a “sprung” meter with five stressed syllables but a varying amount of

unstressed, until the meter is suddenly ditched as a whole. The rhyme scheme, which was

ABAB until now, is left shortly after so that the poem becomes a fully chaotic free verse.

Enjambments are also added to keep the reader on their toes. Right before the line about

“hidden laws,” there are seemingly random enjambments - however, there is a pattern which the

apt reader may notice. They may also notice a handful of references to Classical/Romantic

music and architecture in the poem.

Audio Presentation (Recommended)

Key:

ORANGE = “Normal” Audio

RED = Weird Voice #1 (The High One)

GREEN = Weird Voice #2 (The Low One)

PURPLE = Weird Voice #3 

GOLD = Weird Voice #4

BLUE = Arcadia Excerpts (Note that these are mostly always played in tandem with something else, I posted this script in case editing made it harder to hear)

The Voice(s) of Chaos

by Sriaditya Vaddadi

Humans, rabbits, goldfish, grouse, no matter,

Their populations always fall and grow

But soon, the number begins to plateau,

Order behind the noise and the clatter.

But suddenly, there comes a division,

With a rise in multiplication,

Fun to pronounce,

Easy to denounce,

Two half-words, BIFUR CATION!

Soon two turns to FOUR - 

*I could have only made that joke with that number*

- And soon it turns more,

Eight, sixteen, twos galore!

Before a calm return to

CHAOS!

“The maths isn’t difficult. It’s what you did at school.”

Random points which seem unintelligible, as if someone vomited on my screen!

“Dumdi-dum-dum, dear Valentine, dumdidum-dum to you – the lost algorithm!” 

Illogical, yet completely mathematical, it seems as though math itself is laughing at our futile attempts to understand the world!

“I’ve given up on the grouse. There’s just too much bloody noise!”

There are very sparse islands of hope and order, but at this point it must be too late. 

Entropy increasing,

“Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?”

Rhyme scheme releasing – 

Wait. What was that last part?

Could it be?

A drop of hope in a desert of disorder?

If even in chaos can rhymes exist,

Why not can humans continue to persist?

“Does it mean anything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it means, except mathematically.”

The Sun and the Moon flow through the sky

In a timely manner where they are high

However, them being capable of ruin

With a burning rage and eternal darkness that bring about nature’s undoing

The circle of life that is dedicated to balance

Predator and prey live in silence and malice

They undergo a daily routine of rest and feasting

But there is a dance that has no guarantee of continuous breathing

Living in structured societies of laws and rules

Humans are in a repetition of sleep, eat, and going to schools

But deep within them lives a wrathful turmoil

Emotions and decisions that are capable of putting their lives in spoil

Within in the human brain lives innovation

Always a desire for technology and creation

But with new machines comes serious implications

Greediness and worldly desires leading to devastations

The human reliance on the predictability of nature

The steady and ordered flow of changing seasons and their temperature

Rain, Lightning, and Snow bringing about havoc and mayhem

But the calm after the storm brings about order and a developed system

Throughout all these experiences, order continues to last in a more fractured world

Patterns and Fractals emerge from an event that is hurled

Snowflakes after the storm, Galaxies after the immense collapse of dark matter

As disarray grows, order and structure fight back to preserve and scatter

At dawn, the sky stretches wide with a breath of freshness and soft hues,

Brushed in strokes of rose and amber that bleed slowly into the rising light.

Clouds drift and gather,

Each one a whisper in motion, drawn along invisible tides of air.

The wind creeps across the hills and hums low through the open fields,

Winding through the trees, tugging gently at their silent limbs.

It carries the scent of damp earth and blossoms waiting to arise,

A gentle breath so precise it stirs the flowers awake.

Beneath this fragile stillness lies a tension—rising, electric—

A change that begins as a murmur, too low for the ear to detect.

Far off, the sky thickens with shadow,

A beast forming in silence, a slight shift to this calm veneer.

A sudden boom of thunder roars, low and long,

Low and deliberate, the storm prepares to rise.

Dark clouds stack like towering cathedrals, vast and ominously alive,

And the first cold drop falls heavy, cracking the silence.

Lightning tears across the charcoal sky in pattern,

Brief and blinding, it fractures dreams with its light.

The wild wind hits the world with strength,

Sending forces of power to everything in its way.

Rain crashes down in torrents,

Each droplet striking what was once calm.

Yet even this storm obeys the laws that built it,

A spiral of pressure and motion, all shaped by reasoned force.

For every bolt of fury that sears across the sky,

There is a pattern, a pulse, a thread that ties the chaos to control.

Each gust and gale, though violent, still bends to atmospheric rules,

Each flash of rage is carved by physics, not by chance or fate alone.

From the wreckage left behind, when storms retreat and silence falls,

We build again, replant the fields, redraw the lines.

Let the clouds approach, let the lighting strike the sky,

Let the pulse out from beneath the roar.

In a world where order and chaos meet,

The winds may howl, yet lush trees grow tall.

When stars align with paths so sure, so neat,

While tides rage and wreak havoc till defeat.

Time flows constantly, unpredictably,

A dance of fate unveils a soulless sway.

Our hearts, pumping, beating abnormally,

Seeking night in the everlasting day.

Flowers bloom on top of dusty gravestones,

Undisturbed wild grass grows, unkept, unshaved.

Where humans lie in the dark, all alone,

Unending abyss of dark, divided.

In this great world of balance, we do find,

That order reigns, though chaos fills our mind.

It is a world of depletion,

Where thousands of particles continuously collide.

With but no apparent rhyme or reason,

Orders and patterns by molecules abide.

In chaos, he wonders: is amity but a dream drowned?

Distortions. Interference. All in a state of disarray,

Like the sun’s rise and fall – in chaos bound

Is mankind, led by turbulence, astray.

He tries to pick it out of the noise.

He finally discovers, whether by chance or fate

Patterns from which the ploys

Of the unpredictable and predetermined state.

Yet through the tumult, he gains nobility,

Notions incompatible transformed,

Still elusive, is tranquility

Though his understanding no longer unformed.

In my poem I continuously use the pronoun he, representative of mankind as a whole. My poem

goes through, chronologically, order and disorder in the universe and humankind’s general

understanding of it. I used some of Valentine’s ideas and language from Arcadia such as his

notion of noise and turbulence. I was thinking about using the out of tune piano analogy but I

couldn’t get the rhyming to work with it. I tried to use as many pairs of opposite words as I could

because I think that is also representative of chaos theory due to the fact that it relates two

completely opposite concepts that shouldn’t coexist but do. Some examples are rise and fall and

chance and fate.

In a small, small village on the edge of the world where time felt still lived an old man and a hare in the old man’s house. The old man’s house was affectionately known as Beatrice and was made up of a main room where they lived, dined, cooked, and slept, and a small bathroom with a lace shower curtain covered in small, yellow daffodils. In the main room, a brown suede couch sat in front of a painting of a bowl of grapes separated from the couch only by a glass coffee table. French windows on the side led to an outdoor patio with three chairs, two of which haven’t been occupied in centuries. In the entrance of the main room is a dining table over which loving eyes had once exchanged stories and dinner. There is also a small stove that has held countless teapots and soup pots made for illness and weather and guests long gone.

No one knows where the hare came from, only that this is its home too. The old man does not remember the beginning, either because he chose to forget or because time has begun to play tricks on his addled brain.

This morning, the old man sits on his old chair, the green paint that once gleamed brightly in the sunlight long since soiled and chipped away. The hare hops around the garden from bush to bush, collecting berries that it nibbles and occasionally offers to the old man. The old man absentmindedly collects the berries and throws them back out into the garden, perhaps to feed the birds that never came or perhaps to entertain himself.

Above, clouds begin to approach the edge of the small village.

“Do you fear the clouds, old man?” The hare asks, skipping around the garden as it watches the old man for signs of distress. The old man lets out a huff and shrugs, shaking his head slowly as if coming out of a trance.

“No. There is no point in fearing what cannot be avoided.”

“Will the clouds claim you this time, old man?”

The wind picks up. The yellow daffodils at the edge of the garden that were planted at the beginning of time quiver at the breeze.

“Maybe,” the old man murmurs.

“Will you stop throwing my berries back into the garden?” The hare sighs.

“You ask an awful lot of questions.”

“It’s called a conversation.” The hare begins to claw at the dirt in the garden, burying a handful of berries. It does not share its hopes, but it is clear that this is not the first time that the hare has tried such an experiment – the garden is littered with holes here and there, the grass patchy in some spots.

The old man ignores the hare, instead closing his eyes as a wistful expression overcomes his features, his brows furrowing and the corners of his mouth stretching downwards ever so slightly. This has become a daily conversation with the hare, the two watching as the clouds approach and hurriedly turn back, as if some great force has just chastised them. Once, a long time ago, the old man remembers when the weather was more structured, when humans – silly humans – tried to predict what it would look like the next day, the next week. All it took was a couple decades of destructive weather and they gave up. The mathematics and technology they raced to develop quickly backfired, and they realised their attempts were futile. The hare seems to understand what the old man is thinking, even though he says nothing.

“Do you really think their attempts were useless?” The hare stops its digging and studies the old man’s expression. The old man’s eyes remain shut.

“No. They made sense of the world for a while. Predicting snow days and rainy weather weeks in advance helped them plan ahead, plan accordingly.”

“It helped them play God is all it did. They loved to pretend they knew what was coming,” the hare looks away and places some strawberries in the hole he has just dug up. “What of the flash floods and extreme droughts? The silly little creatures became useless the moment their plans were screwed. Countless died for what their ancestors would’ve once easily handled.”

“And countless lived because they had warnings. Think of the people that evacuated hurricanes their ancestors would’ve had no way of expecting.”

“And think of the people who had those warnings and neglected them, believing themselves to be luckier.”

The old man opens his eyes at this, the corners of his mouth plunging even lower as the wrinkle between his eyebrows deepens. He hadn’t thought of this before. What was the point of predicting the weather if the people didn’t listen? Perhaps the point was for those who did to live and those who grew negligent to die. Survival of the fittest, after all.

“It’s always the same with you humans,” the hare begins again. “You try to make sense of the world through your inventions, losing sight of the abilities you’ve always had, the abilities nature gave you. You built ships to navigate oceans you were never meant to cross.”

The clouds become darker, getting closer and closer to the edge of the garden. Somewhere in the distance, a murder of crows flies upwards, squawking all the way. Several moments pass as the old man ponders this. Finally, the old man gets up and walks inside. The hare does not look up, but hears the old man’s steps as he pours the pot of tea that had been boiling on the stove all morning, now an angry shade of red. The old man does not seem to notice the scalding-hot sizzling sound that the pot makes as he holds it in his hands. He adds two cubes of sugar to his cup, stirring it with a teaspoon of which no match can be found in the house. The hare loves to collect shiny trinkets for the old man, and though he’d never sung any appreciation for the gesture, there is a drawer full of spoons that the old man insists on using for the rest of eternity.

The old man walks back outside, carefully setting his tea cup and saucer at the center of the circular tea stain on the arm of his chair.

“What do you mean, we were never meant to navigate the oceans?” He finally asks.

“I mean what I mean. You were given all the land on Earth and insisted on claiming that which does not belong to you.”

“We never claimed it – we simply organised it,” the old man takes a sip of his tea. Lemon rosemary. “We navigated it to explore the lands we were bestowed.”

The hare climbs the couple steps to the old man’s feet, depositing a batch of rotten berries that it has deemed impossible to grow. The old man collects them and dips them into his tea before throwing them back out, this time over the fence of his garden.

“Those lands were never yours. You ought to have learned your lesson by the time you realised some ships set sail and never returned, long lost to the canvas of waves,” the hare hops onto one of the empty chairs, assessing the expression on the old man’s face once more. When it deems the old man appropriately displeased, the hare leaps off the chair and back into the shrubbery, this time to collect blackberries. “Why you never thought to quit when the hungry water turned promises to tragedy evades me.”

“Because even from tragedy, there is art that can be made. We drew pictures and created heroes of the sunken sailors, created romances so great their stories were told over and over again. There was a point to the effort. Take the Titanic, for example.”

“The what?”

“Nothing. An ancient myth for an ancient man is all. The point is, we made peace even amidst the tyranny of nature, found maps and forms among stars scattered haphazardly across the sky. That takes strength, wisdom.”

“It takes stupidity. We never meant for the constellations to make sense. You were lonely creatures looking for familiarity – you failed to realise that we never wanted you. You were exiled for a reason, and that was your fear of yourselves.”

“That’s not true,” the old man tilts his head in confusion now. The hare has never seemed more insistent about something before, and the old man was not sure he liked this more serious side to the hare. “What do you mean, we were scared of ourselves?”

“You ran away from the one law set upon us by nature – that there are no laws. Your minds were too small to process the infinite world around you so you decided to create constraints and punish all beings that did not fall within them. You created abominations and complained when they turned on you,” the hare begins to raise its voice.

Lightning is heard in the distance, the clouds swarming darker and faster around the garden, the last bit of sunlight over the village landing squarely over Beatrice. Perhaps if the old man had been less distracted trying to make sense of the hare’s words, he would realise that this is the closest the clouds have ever come, the farthest they’ve ever travelled. This time, it is the hare that tosses the blackberries. They fall into the old man’s lap.

“I don’t understand,” the old man breathes. He’s trying to think so hard but his mind feels elsewhere. “This doesn’t make any sense. We were put on Earth as a job, not a punishment. We weren’t exiled. We were to improve and complete this world – to create peace and order. What are you talking about?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” The hare screams. “It is of chaos and nothing that you were made, and it is to chaos and nothing that you shall return. Stop trying to make sense of the world and just live in it! You insist on believing that you were somehow special, somehow important, but you don’t realise that we genuinely don’t give a shit about you! You. Don’t. MATTER.”

The silence now is sudden and unwelcome. Light rain drops begin to fall onto the old man’s brow and trail down his face, slowly filling his cup once more. The hare begins to walk towards the old man, slowly growing feet and legs and hands and a body with each thumping step he takes. His face blurs in and out of sight as the old man wheezes in a breath, trying to make sense of the features before him.

“You don’t understand that NONE of it ever mattered. You create sentiment and emotion to process a world that was not meant for you to process.”

A mouth. Pink, slightly chapped lips. A nose. Hooked – no, aquiline. Eyes. Eyes.

Warmth swarms the old man, his face flushing as he remembers. Remembers a thousand years ago, remembers yesterday.

“No… no. No, no, NO NO NO NO. NO! Please…” the old man whimpers, holding out his hands as they flicker in and out of focus. Suddenly he sees a small scar materialise on his hand, one he had almost forgotten about, one his body had healed long ago and unearthed now. A scar from when he was six years old, running and slipping on the mud, cutting his palm on a curb. The daffodils he saw blurred by his tears were a vivid yellow, like the daffodils on her dress all those years ago, the dress he buried his face into. His mother. He had forgotten such a beautiful word existed, forgotten what it had felt like to be loved, to know someone so much older than him.

Back then when there was order. Back then when there was discord, too.

He felt so lonely on his own with the hare. The world had ended and begun again and he was still here.

The rain pelts his face as it crumbles slowly, returning to the sand and dirt from which it came.

Click to read the full text: Untitled by Caroline Walczak and Sophie He

The sea is at rest, the wind is withheld,

Birds flying high, worries erased from sight,

Until the waves appear, one by one, impelled,

Two, then four, constantly double in height,

Frequency picks up, the danger sets in,

Morning red, the sailors’ ships lay to bed,

Birds swept down, their safety lying thin,

Chaos sets in, all silence is broken,

Yet beneath the foam, a rhythm remains,

Currents unseen guide the water’s wild flight,

A quiet hand steering through loss and gains,

Order tucked deep in the chaos of nights.

So we, like the sea, rage, calm, break, restore,

Living each moment between less and more