re-containing the egg

I have a feeling that most of modern life (by which I mean the last c. 150 years, not just right now) is about eggzackerly this....yesterday we were with the descent into chaos, now we're putting it back into, not its box, but another seemingly suitable container. Sliced up neatly, contained. Chaos has been beaten again.

All futuristic films and books had this theme to them - containing chaos, containing random nature. Putting it in clean, stable, man-made structures and making it predictable.

However, the only thing that is, really, predictable is the descent into chaos. Humankind is achieving nothing more by attempting to contain chaos than it does by throwing stones into a river. An act that I like to imagine was human's first act of effecting change in nature. Maybe because I like doing it so much. I imagine a cross or contemplative early hairy-human tossing stones into a river to express his/her emotions before words and reflective thoughts were available to do the job in a more confusing way. These days we write songs and poems and paint pictures and take endless bloody photos to express ourselves....whilst trying to contain our utter terror about mess, chaos, dirt, lack of control by making sure that everything is uniform and straight and on time. Sometimes I think that our current collective consciousness is just a bad case of OCD with sudden outbreaks of violent temper.

And I spend my life battling the slide into chaos in our house, garden, appointments diary and all those other places a mum has to be. I am constantly doing the equivalent of taking the peeled eggs and chopping them neatly and putting them in little bowls. And throwing away the peels in the hope that no one will find out that I managed to let another one escape. And it does feel, sometimes like I am perfectly in tune with the collective consciousness......but other times I smile in the face of the futility of it all and look forward to the moment (in full knowledge that I won't be around to see it) when all the atoms that were once me spin off into space somewhere and all will be nothing. Or a new something.