change

Driving down the Solomon Hochoy Highway, I get a call from another life - asking me what I'm doing. 'Driving on the highway'. I'm asked if I'm going to a conference in Hungary related to information technology.

I process this. Hungary. A few months ago Hungary would not have seemed so distant, but with recent changes, it seems very distant. In fact, it seems pretty much impossible - I've already canceled my trip to Prato, Italy to present a paper on virtual worlds. The real world has emphatically shook me back into the fold. Here I am, in a tangible position of reality, being asked if I want to go to a conference in Hungary about something that I never understood the need for conferences for. Either you grok or not.

'No'.

As if I hadn't said 'no', the conversation goes into a reasoning as to why the caller wanted to know if I was going - and the answer was...

'But I'm not going.'

And I'm not. Maybe in the future I will place my foot into that life again, but for now my foot is grounded in the mud and a dream of something that I never had before.

I read somewhere, long ago - I think it was in Scientific American - that they had found that the drop of water that hits the surface does not mix with the water it hits, instead bouncing because of the surface tension. There were photographs, and I believe it was a blue drop of water bouncing off of red water - something that most people wouldn't find interesting, but something that is when it is considered. The drop that creates the ripple does not get absorbed until if falls back again - when the ripple has already started across the surface.

Change bounces on the surface tension of the status quo. Rippled might cause the surface area to increase and also the angle of incidence of the drop to the surface to change until the drop is absorbed. A secret life of a water drop. For a drop to have an effect, it does not have to become a part of the system... it must only bounce. And by bouncing, the status quo is changed enough for the change to be absorbed. This isn't something that I have studied in a laboratory, but I imagine that it is true after watching many drops of water closely over the period of my life.