Cuiouser and Curiouser

I don't know that I ever expected to figure "it" out .... after all, "it" changes at least as often as decade to decade .... sometimes moment to moment. I think as a child, "it" began as a quest for competencies ... I suppose we all, Players in the Last Quarter, remember the young woman sharply telling her Mother in the laundry room: Mother, I'd rather do it myself. We get more or less caught up in a struggle between those who are holding on to their skills and those who want them for their own .... for the first time. .................. A slew of competencies ... locomotion ... self-feeding .... cleaning one's own butt .... travelling independently in ever-widening circles, initially around home-base, typically Mom and Dad ..... independence and autonomy .... the right to connect with the tattooed, with the Gothed-out, I suppose, with the swing-dancers and the bad boys and girls ... ..... Then we dress up to the dreamed parts ... bathed in sharkskins or tailored suits, dripping in Gold announcing how much I'm adored or Rolexes telling others how much I've done. ................... I feel, betimes, like I've attained "it" when I'm carrying around a power saw ... gas-powered, electric rotary, ... reshaping a little world and I feel it when I enter the office I've occupied for 35 years .... Howard the Lion-Hearted and his lair from whence he holds court over his silly collections of statuary, books and findings, and who is visited there by those who seek my company and counsel. ........ Mandelbrot and others began playing with fern-like geometric structures that have a curious property. Each peace grows into the whole. One is called the Sierpinski triangle, named after one of the greats from the Polish Academy of Science that flourished, particularly, in Warsawa and Lwow before the Great War. Stage 1. A triangle can be cut into four smaller triangles by bisecting each side and joining the sides.   Stage II. The middle of the four can then be removed and the three smaller ones can be cut into four still smaller triangles with the middle of each removed. .... Stage III, etc. can, in our minds, go on forever, yielding a swiss-cheese of triangles that covers an area but can be thought of as having no substance ... no area. ....... Each triangle, if this could really be done, is exactly the same as the whole. ..... These folk called these structures Fractals and interactive forms of them can be found on the Net. ..... In any case, In the search for "it," we eventually become like one of those big triangles ... replaced by many others. When we were disassembling my parent's home some years ago, I was walking with my grand-daughter. She asked, looking at the framed pictures, how a family was formed, as obviously my Dad and Mom had their family. I didn't have the heart to tell Sophia that families are formed as older families break apart, allowing for the new. So much of what keeps our nose to the grindstone in searching for "it," has to do with, what I call, 'the fantasy of the eternal family.' I still have a brother and two sisters ... 69-73 years old and each with their own family of children, grandchildren and livestock. We are connected by Histor but the eternal family is in pieces. Each of my children, now, have their own families and the one that I sat in front of as proud pater familias is in many ways no more. ....................... Being part of an unfolding and recursive process ain't tiddlywinks but is part of brisk Play in the Fourth Quarter.