weather thought 1

When I first started working on a dance about chaos, I went to the Emory Library (because I can’t begin anything without books) and began poring through piles of physics books that were way over my head. My brain scraped the pages searching for sentences that brought even momentary clarity to the question:  what IS chaos?

I knew chaos scared me because it involves entropy, disorder, falling apart. And I think so much of my everyday includes the constant upkeep against entropy. I realized I had so many negative connotations around the word chaos that I felt only fear and anxiety when I tried to apply it.

___

When you love what is
And are attached to what is

The dissolution
The rearrangement of what is
Is terrifying

What is always will be.
But everything changes.
___

One key thing that I learned is that these systems change when they want to because they are based on attraction, not on punishment or discontent.

Chaos is the awkward space between orientations, centers of universes.

Chaos is just movement that surprises us.

It is not illogical or irrational. Simply, its beginnings were more secret, more subtle; and we couldn’t pick up on change's existence until it thunderstormed into our Thursday afternoon.

It doesn’t come out of nowhere. We just didn’t see it.

I think for me, chaos will always demand more bravery than I have because not-knowing looks like darkness. But dark isn’t default bad or malevolent- it’s just a surprise. Like when someones covers your eyes to place a birthday cake in front of you.

Chaos is when we don’t see the beginning - just the clouds building, a storm rolling in, the candles lit, a cake that we didn’t make before us on the table, people we didn’t know were coming arrive to surround us with love.