What we talk about when we talk about entropy

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Something in my head is wired to be outwardly tidy.  Somehow that jumble of brain cells knows that while my biological being is a mess of interconnecting capillaries affecting neurons influencing who knows what else, having a basic control on my immediate surroundings soothes me.  Which makes me the person who, if need be, leaves tidy piles of papers on her desk for the next day (the preference, of course, being a bare desktop); the person who makes sure all the clothes are facing the same direction in her color-coded closet; the person whose first purchase for a new apartment was a mini filing cabinet so she could have a place for everything.  My borderline obsession for neatness has always been a source of amusement for roommates, who watch while I shovel unopened mail into little stacks, squirrel away shoe boxes under the table, and create designated spaces for manicure accessories.  As I explained to one friend, this need to create a clean space trumps all else.  I simply can’t function in any other setting.

Which is why it came as a shock when my creative writing professor threw down the last page of my memoir one dreary November afternoon and praised me for my ability to dig into the messiness of life.  Beaming at me, she announced that it was clear to her that my theme was entropy.  I stubbornly pointed out the sparse language, the fleeting scenes, and above all, passage after passage of highly controlled dialogue—none of these things, I insisted, should lead her to believe that I was embracing entropy in any way.  Did she not notice how my characters were mostly external, focusing on physical tasks instead of mucking about with feelings?  Or was it not clear enough that this is a quiet story, that it wasn’t following any type of Augusten Burroughs arc?  But, my professor interjected, life is about messiness.  No matter how hard you try, things will organically fall apart and just as organically come together again in a slightly different way, over and over again.

I resisted.  Understandable, I hope, considering my love for calm spaces.  I revised my memoir for another torturous month, handed it in, and then promptly forgot about my professor’s entropy pep talk for seven years.  At long last (I’m a slow muller), I’m beginning to see what my professor meant.  So much of my time is spent anxiously trying to avoid unnecessary surprises that I sometimes worry that my worrying will prematurely gnaw a hole in my stomach.  But for some reason, I’m finally realizing that there are too many variables that I can’t control, and that fretting about them actually might give me an ulcer someday.  Even now, I can see my professor’s tiny, unlit office, the tribal weaving hung up above the squishy velvet couch, the ceramic mug of tea that my professor was ignoring as she tilted her chair back towards the window, her cowboy boots dangling in the air as she watched me try to wrap my head around what that ream of paper on her desk meant to me.

So maybe I like to keep my surroundings tidy—because that’s something that I actually have control over.  But everything else?  I’ll let entropy take care of it.