LETTERS FROM HOME: TRYING TO GET A BREAK FROM THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

Oct. 16, 1997

Dear C.C.,

Days before we are to receive house guests, musicians from St. Louis, DC and I are trying to restore order to our house.

We decided that cleaning one room per day for a week would sort of get the job done. So far we've straightened up two rooms in one day and no rooms during the rest of the week.

The paperwork on the dining room table has taken on the appearance of a permanent feature. One of the bedrooms where our guests will be sleeping is a seldom-seen repository of unironed clothes, unread junk mail, boxes of Christmas cards that won't be depleted until 2010, DC's toy farm, and stereo equipment many years past its technological prime.

We are the second law of thermodynamics in action.

The second law of thermodynamics is seldom heard from until a situation arises where chaos seems to be the guiding principle. Then somebody with a graduate degree explains everything by saying, "Ah, it's the second law of thermodynamics."

The law states that all systems, if left alone, tend to fall apart. Scientists call it irreversibility, entropy.

If a coffee cup is knocked off a table and breaks, that's entropy. The arrow always points in that direction, not the other way around.

Our own system falls apart until the next time we have guests. The messes Hank and Lucy make are noted and observed, categorized as abominable behavior or simply dogs-will-be-dogs. Sometimes cleanup is required, but nothing's as clean as it was before when dogs are involved.

You cannot change the second law of thermodynamics. You can only jump in and kick up some dust.

To some people, physics is simple. Not to me, but the mysticism is intriguing. Physicists are seekers, the shamans of the modern world. They speak of particles and waves we cannot see, "wavicles," and with their powerful machinery they can only claim to have seen footprints that lead in the direction of their beliefs.

Inexorably, their calculations lead to the unknowable.

Einstein spoke of a reality "apart from the direct visible truth."

The system he tried to describe was all the God he believed in. But what a God.

Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!

How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!

How the clouds pass silently overhead!

How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon stars, dart on and on!

How the water sports and sings ! (surely it is alive!)

How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches and leaves!

(Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.)

O amazement of things -- even the least particle.

O spirituality of things!

... I sing to the last the equalities modern or old,

I sing the endless finales of things,

I say Nature continues, glory continues,

I praise with electric voice,

for I do not see one imperfection in the universe,

And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,

I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.

-- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"

Got your card from the Grand Canyon. You dreamed about an old coyote your first night camping. Then a coyote came to you at Joshua Tree. That's the amazement of things.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.