Summation by Parts

by Mandira Pattnaik

Ashkan Forouzani

Word musings bring me to “unbridled.” In India, where I live, it is common to witness chaos theory. Nothing is ever static. There are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization in the perceived randomness of chaotic systems. Chaos is dynamic, delivers diverging outcomes. Hence, once saddened we didn’t have a snowman on Christmas, I no longer think that’s something I miss in my city. We have frequently changing weather — rain, and sun and back to rain within a few hours, a unique climatic pattern. If you want snow, you travel up north to Kashmir and Himachal. Nowhere is it drab, no miles of uninhabited land, nothing to tell you that anything ever ends. In the context of imaginings, it’s difficult to think of alien invasions in a place milling with people (explains the little sci-fi we produce) or weirdness. When all things super strange have been assimilated into the ordinary before you were born, there’s little that is unexpected (perhaps the fact so few of our art borders on the abstract). That brings me to why I might use “unbridled.” Fourteenth-century word, dictionary meaning: uncontrolled, unrestrained or — the word that circles to my “outsider” musings — raw! Chaos, I’m heartened to note, is known for unbridled creative fecundity.

Rawness and chaos. Reading of contemporary writers, especially poets, flags a noticeable trend here. Asian and African works lean towards dynamic societal situations, chaos, habitat, loss, and identity, while writers in North America and Europe tell you about family, history, politics, modernism and personal contradictions. While it isn’t by any means a comprehensive evaluation, it might be at least a pointer. I love how the two strands mingle, and will eventually collapse into each other.

As flash fiction writers and poets, who write in both categories, and are inspired by one another, it is fascinating to peruse what one might be missing. Although stories from the other half-world may seem disjointed and abstract in the context of one’s own, they may be read as broken-up parts of the whole and ready for reassembly. It reminds me of Cubism, a term which says the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Picasso together with Georges Braque used Cubism, art as an asset of concealment and ambiguity, and referred to his paintings as parts that were there to be “solved.” Similarly, for writing, your own as part of the whole, and otherness (in all parameters possible), as object of admiration and assimilation, may be useful to us.

Returning to word choices, some may trigger passionate wars in literary circles, and part of it is due to lack of a comprehensive understanding. For example, a public debate ensued (2016) when the Canadian anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan tweeted the dictionary publisher Oxford after noticing that their definition for the word “rabid” listed the phrase “rabid feminist” as an example. Other words found discriminatory or sexist included “shrill,” “psyche,” “nagging,” “blacklist,” “black sheep,” and “white lie.” Although first responding light-heartedly, Oxford Dictionary was later forced to review, though dictionary users were, in any case, at an all-time low. To me, this careless usage stems from insensitivity towards the otherness, and perhaps, rigidity towards acceptance of a dynamic evolving system (chaos).

In this context, it is far more important to be tolerant, sensitive, and inclusive, while exercising unbridled creativity. Read a lot. Especially what you are skeptical about. It may not be to your tastes; still, it is recommended. It may be the only tool we have to defeat an influential force in global discourse that manipulates opinions to guide them towards hate and divisiveness.