After writing a response to Kevin and a response to Sarah Mae, and then reading other posts, such as those by Brian and Stephen and Tall Jessica, and also thinking about my own reactions to our assigned readings (including that execrable tome by DeLeuze or whoever) and our class discussions, I've realized that there is a definite pattern emerging.

Simply put - the narrative of our class is the struggle between Order and Chaos, and the various roles played by these two forces in our lives. Essentially, the narrative is about power - power over our own lives, power over the class, power over our classmates' perceptions. In fact, power is pretty much defined as the triumph between Order and Chaos. If you have power, you have the ability to influence your environment and the people around you.

I know, I know - that's quite lofty. Between the capitalizations and the references to Concepts, I run the risk of sounding like a tormented teenager bloodletting my "deep thoughts" into my diary. Either that, or a major pothead, but as has already been said several times, this class often has the quality of an extended bull session fueled by some heavy-duty bong rips, so paying homage to the Cheechs, the Chongs and the Woody Harrelsons of the world is only fitting, I think.

Still - who is to say that Order and Chaos are forces reserved only for the gods? Do we not live with gravity and consciousness? Are we not a part of the universe? As a part of the universe we are just as subject to the forces of Order and Chaos as a quark or a supernova. After all, we are made of stardust. Everything on this planet began its life within a star. There is no reason we cannot apply the laws of the universe to our own existences. In fact, the universe demands it.

Can I just rewind a second, to this sentence: "Everything on this planet began its life within a star.'

My first love - aside from my parents and my stuffed rabbit named Jolene - were the night skies. To lie on my back and just stare out at all of that space, all of which was waiting to be filled by my imagination. There is nothing as beautiful as a velvety night sky blanketed with stars and stardust, glimmering at us from millions of years ago. The mind literally boggles when taking in the night sky - to contemplate the universe like this is a mindbending yet sobering experience.

It's for this reason that I find the disappearance of the night sky from populated areas to be such a tragedy. I don't know about you, but if I want to see more than Orion, I have to drive for a while. If I'm not looking hard, all I see is a muted black-orange glow from the street lights. No wonder so many people take so much petty bullshit so seriously. Without the nightly reminder of our status as One of Many, it becomes very easy to consider ourselves the Center of the Universe.

Okay, digression done.

In my own life, I've found that I am at my most centered - my most 'self-actualized', I suppose - when I dispose of external restrictions and look inward to truly understand my own values and my own ideas. Sometimes this is a disaster, like my abortive attempts at meditation. I cannot meditate. I either sit there while my mind races, or I fall asleep. The much vaunted state of heightened consciousness has yet to show itself to me, at least not while I'm sitting somewhere with my eyes closed. In my car or in the shower, though - that's a whole 'nother story. I'm like the Buddha of the Shower. All of my ideas and insights come to me when my body is doing something that heavily relies on muscle memory.

This actually has a point. I swear.

My point is that when I really started to understand who I am and what kind of person I want to be, my need to control the world faded away. I still work to influence it, by speaking my mind, writing and engaging other people in conversation, but I'm over my need to make everything fit my own expectations. I think about my own life, and how many aspects of my life - such as my relationship with my husband - were essentially "happy accidents". When I went to work one day in July 1998 as a tech support representative for a large computer company, I had no expectation that I would meet the boy who would become my now-husband of seven years. When I made a plan to study marine biology but ended up majoring in journalism, I had no idea that I would take to journalism the way I have.

Even smaller things - a conversation with a classmate, a smile from a stranger, a fabulous song or piece of art - are enough to make my entire being glow with happiness for hours afterward. I take such pleasure in these things - all things that would not exist without glorious, unpredictable people - that I have come to realize that I don't love these things despite the Chaos that brings them into my world, but that I love the Chaos because it brings these things into my world.

I take a look back through history, and I see how a need to control everything outside of ourselves has been the fuel of so much pain and suffering and misery. Let's take the obvious example - the Holocaust. The Holocaust had its genesis in the economic, political and to a certain extent, the mass emotional instability of Germany after World War I. The Germans wanted to regain their power (aka, their ability to influence the world around them) and they did so by targeting the vulnerable populations among them - the Jews, the homosexuals, the Gypsies, the disabled.

Let's take another - let's take the whole system of patriarchy. I don't mean something as black and white as 'man vs. woman', but rather the whole system of social organization that relies heavily on hierarchy to work. For instance, a man might come home and boss his wife and kids around while expecting them to kowtow to his every whim, but that dude then leaves the house and goes to the office, where he is then bossed around by another man who expects him to kowtow to his every whim. In my opinion, the idea that a man should be able to control his wife and kids is really just a way to lock people in power struggles in their personal lives while distracting them from the fact that all but a very few of us, to put it quite frankly, getting fucked over. (Ditto with racism, transphobia and homophobia, which is really just misogyny directed at gay men.) How did all of this get started? Well, I imagine it probably had something to do with control of resources, aka women's bodies, from which other people emerge. The destruction of patriarchal systems invites the liberation of both men and women who live under its system, but it also invites Chaos, and this freaks. people. out. But it's necessary to live a full life, not just as a woman, who is expected to be servile and devoid of personality under patriarchy, but also a man, who is essentially expected to be a sociopathic tyrant in order to be considered a man in full. In this case, as in so many others, Chaos is not only good but necessary.

I can go and on and on, but I'll spare you.

I have to take a shower, so I'll sum this up quickly. The narrative of our class is the narrative of human history. It's about fighting to maintain a sense of Order in the face of Chaos. It's about exercising power over our lives. But it's also about embracing Chaos as a powerful force for good - as well as evil - in our lives.

I have more thoughts, but later.