The Unbearable Lightness of Being String ...(part 1)

There are times in the study of Gordon's String Theory when one is taken by surprise at what can only be described, however inadequately, as the 'absolute stringiness of string'...perhaps it is an odd location, or a particularly beautifully executed functionality, or even just an unusual colour or pattern. One finds oneself imagining artistic purpose behind our strung out universe...or not.

all the elegance of a sonnet, with none of the words...

In this installment we shall look at such examples of random perfection, the inherent entropy of string contrasted with its undeniably purposeful purposes. How, for example, are we to comprehend the utterly and beautifully pointless arrangement of a few feet of white string on an Irish beach, except in terms of poetry? It ties nothing together, it meanders, stranded on the strand between strands of seaweeds, sinuously beginning to insinuate its way around a sea urchin, carelessly casting a shadow while all the time lying motionless. The next tide will move it somewhere else, perhaps to rest again like a line of free verse in the sand, or perhaps coiled around some other detritus, at the whim of waves and particles, time and tides. I should have been a pair of ragged claws...whoops! lapsed into some real poetry there for a second! Sorry, won't happen again.

Not Butler's Garter Snake, but still a bit creepy when you're just strolling along

Or this, like snakes sunning themselves in the mud of the Fraser River floodplain? Wrapped around a doomed stick, the headless, tailless 

Butler's Garter Snake

form of a striped rope has all the menacing qualities of a simple garter snake, even though we easily see the two ends, still purposeful in their intention to connect to something......while beyond, another pale, dishevelled, twisted form lies like a cast-off skin.

Do not open the gate...if you wish to fall, climb over the fence

All that keeps the ocean at bay...

Highly specialized functional string: knitted iceberg grabbers

Far, far across the continent,  about as far across as one can go, in fact, another string is wrapped around two  pieces of reinforcing rod, pretending, it would seem, to be keeping the North Atlantic far, far below at bay as it chews away at Ferryland Point and the magnificent lighthouse thereon. Not very far (certainly not far, far) along the same cliff edge, a gate inexplicably perches, an invitation to the curious walker to the edge, while numerous strategically knotted knots prevent the inevitable plunge downwards, while mere inches to the right, a few thin strands would hardly accomplish the same, and, it would appear, perhaps haven't...Yes, that is an iceberg off in the distance. Other than almost endless winter from October to June, complete with howling gales and the lashing of blizzardly winds, frozen rain, snow, somebody's laundry, shed parts, small boats, dogs and cats, hail, gravel, moose* and forty kinds of driven sleet, Newfoundland is stunningly beautiful, when it isn't raining, drizzling or foggy. The locals prize the occasional bit of free ice in the hot, sunny summer day(s) - and who wouldn't at that price!- hence the readily available mittens, (knitting being possibly the most brilliant adaptation of string to the needs of humanity, with or without the adjoining idjit string) on these nearby posts for catching bergy bits as they drift into shore. Now there is ice cubes in a drink, but then... there is BERGY BITS in a drink! The difference is captured gasses highly compressed in 25,000-year-old bergy ice that create the most amazing effervescence when dropped into a glass of room temperature rum. Of course, you really have to be there to get the grand effect of the wonderful science, b'y!...

* all items, you will note, except for rain, snow, hail, gravel and sleet, that should be tied to something! Except moose. Don't try tying a moose to anything...

(to be continued)