Centre Cannot Hold

Butterfly Effect

And you spin and you spin and the little girl at the end of the skipping rope screams with excitement and holds on for dear life as your arms start to fill with lactic acid and your muscles fatigue but your grip is locked so tight. The worn grassy playing field under her feet starts to disintegrate and spin away from you, the peeling white metal goalposts collapse into three matchsticks and soar away over the church roof one of them catching its toe and flickering uncontrollably in the skinny light, the advertising hoarding with the triangular display that lets you see three separate images over the course of two minutes recedes until it is but a pixel, the TV transmitter on the smooth back of the highest hill in the county takes off, the one with the pulsing aircraft warning light that you can see through the mist, reaches the required velocity to leave the earth's atmosphere, goes into orbit around the moon, the skies darken and the air is whipped up, faster and faster until the sun is obscured and a hurricane revolves around you. You are the eye of the storm. Somehow this feels like a new equilibrium. You ask yourself whether the world should be this chaotic, constantly in motion, the furthermost, most extreme particles slamming into each other creating chaos and confusion, whilst you stand in the centre trying desperately to hold on because you know that in the end it will all stop. You will finally be at rest and the rope will fall to the ground without noise, the little girl will walk over to you and throw her arms around your shoulders. You will pick her up and you will be surprised to see that the ice cream van is still there, although it only sells one variety. You will buy her an ice cream cone, with a flake, with extra strawberry sauce.