Chaos Theory & the Nuclear Family         
    
    
    SUNDAY IN RIVERSIDE PARK the Fathers fix their sons in
    place, nailing them magically to the grass with baleful
    ensorcelling stares of milky camaraderie, & force them to
    throw baseballs back & forth for hours.     The boys almost
    appear to be small St Sebastians' pierced by arrows of
    boredom.
    
    The smug rituals of family fun turn each humid Summer     
    meadow into a Theme Park, each son an unwitting allegory of
    Father's wealth, a pale representation 2 or 3 times removed
    from reality: the Child as metaphor of Something-or-other.
    
    And here I come as dusk gathers, stoned on mushroom dust,
    half convinced that these hundreds of fireflies arise from
    my own consciousness -- Where have they been all these     
    years ?     why so many so suddenly ? -- each rising in the     
    moment of its incandescence, describing quick arcs like     
    abstract graphs of the energy in sperm.
    
    "Families ! misers of love ! How I hate them !" Baseballs fly
    aimlessly in vesper light, catches are missed, voices rise
    in peevish exhaustion.     The children feel sunset encrusting
    the last few hours of doled-out freedom, but still the
    Fathers insist on stretching the tepid postlude of their
    patriarchal sacrifice till dinnertime, till shadows eat the
    grass.
    
    Among these sons of the gentry one locks gazes with me for a
    moment -- I transmit telepathically the image of sweet
    license, the smell of TIME unlocked from all grids of
    school, music lessons, summer camps, family evenings round
    the tube, Sundays in the Park with Dad -- authentic time,
    chaotic time.
    
    Now the family is leaving the Park, a little platoon of
    dissatisfaction.     But _that_one_ turns & smiles back at me in
    complicity -- "Message Received" -- & dances away after a
    firefly, buoyed up by my desire.     The Father barks a mantra
    which dissipates my power.
    
    The moment passes.     The boy is swallowed up in the pattern of
    the week -- vanishes like a bare-legged pirate or Indian taken
    prisoner by missionaries.     The Park knows who I am, it stirs
    under me like a giant jaguar about to wake for nocturnal
    meditation.     Sadness still holds it back, but it remains
    untamed in its deepest essence: an exquisite disorder at the
    heart of the city's night.
    
    
             "Hakim Bey"