What If......?

“In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a non-linear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.
Although the butterfly effect may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.
The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.”


I believe Mark Twain capsulated this in his darkest and most cynical short story "The Mysterious Stranger" long before Mr. Lorenz defined it in a more scientific treatment. Those simple twists of fate (or should we say, a butterfly effect) that sends repercussions across many boundaries, that skew time-lines into different tangents (you know, the whole space/time continuum crap; too much Star Trek or Back To The Future for us, I guess.) potentially happens to us everyday. We can't fight it, so I guess we must take action in order to avoid being acted upon. To put it as Sancho Panza stated "Whether the stone hits the pitcher, or the pitcher hits the stone, it's going to be bad for the pitcher."; however, in a similar vein Paul Simon said "I'd rather be the hammer than the nail.." Oh, yes we would!

Now, I don't recall clearly whether that Fate City Limit sign, 1 mile,  was entering into Fate or exiting Fate. Apparently we were somewhere close to fate, or destiny. Actually Destiny is a street somewhere in Florida, among other places, and Fate is on the northeast side of Dallas,Texas, which is where we were at the time. Anyway, I digress. All I can remember specifically are Wendy's (my Muse's) eyes locking with mine, two grins, and the camera flash. I suppose that was the day we decided to create this website, which is our relentless pursuit, our journey to rediscover ourselves, our fate, our destiny. Til then......

                                                                       I'm still searching,
                                                                       Barry (Mad Poet) Dennison