Sunday, April 04, 2010

Stochasticity

Is just a fancy word for randomness. Biologists seem to like it, talking about a 'stochastic system' makes it sound a hell of a lot more like you know what you are talking about than saying 'yeah, it's a pretty random system'.

Let's call it serendipity instead: I'm in another play. A production of The Diary of Anne Frank is going up next week it turns out one of the actors (bit part, 3 lines, apparently) can't make the mandatory 3-day intensive rehearsal at a cottage in the highlands, so I'm going instead! Am I going for the Nazis or for the holiday? Time will tell...

So that's me off for a wee bit. It should be really good for me working, actually, as the internet appears to be my nemesis when it comes to work. I'll print out the articles I'd bookmarked and gone "good enough!" for and actually read them. Or, so I think. I think it'll also be brilliant social times--I got closer to the biologists I lived with for a week this summer in that week than most of the people I've met this year. Should be interesting times. It means putting off the gym-going and guitar-learning goals I've had for this week, but so be it!

I have gotten back into writing again with a good flow, which is really nice. Have also committed to a 1000-word-a-day goal, 500 words of essay and 500 for please. I have kept said goal exactly...once. But goals are a good start, at least.

So, blog silence for a few days. I'll let you know how it all goes. And, of course, leave you with a poem of mine, or a fragment of one:

Shall I read you what I’ve written

So you’ll know where I have been?

Shall I paint a pretty picture?

No? Then where should I begin?

I could write ten thousand tales,

I could spin a hundred yarns,

Even tell you where I’m headed

Leave you with a crown of thorns.

I could lay it out in verse,

I could stand it up in song.

I could sail there and back again

Before the telling was too long.

I could shake you by the shoulders,

I could grip you by the ears,

I could wail on all night,

Or else unfold it through the years.

But tell me where I should begin,

And how I should proceed

Tell me—extol me—allow my voice

To scream! To speak! At least, to read.

1 comment:

swallace said...

So where does human agency fit into a random universe?