Evolving rhythms

Well, since we don't have any Baby Einstein videos to return for a full refund, I feel like I've got a little extra time on hand: Daylight Savings will give us one hour, and now the Disney Corporation has given us another, in a sense, as we don't have to wait in line at some soulless Babies R Us. And, given that Cleo's napping, there's no better way to spend those free hours, of course, then trawling the Web and blogging about her - the 43 student papers waiting to be graded will still be there, I assume, when I've finished my post. So get in, friend, get in, and let's go for a brief ride.

Perceptual psychologists have long noted that humans have a tendency (or an ability, depending on your point of view) to discern order in chaos. I know the idea largely thorough the work of some especially interesting art historians: J.J. Pollitt, for instance, once argued that the isolation, or imposition, of order in the face of nature's flux was at the core of early Greek art, and Sir Ernst Gombrich dealt at length with the notion of perceived order in his later work. But you might also think of music: consider, for example, the convergence of rhythms in a drum circle. Or here's Yehudi Menuhin, the American violinist and conductor: "Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous." When confronted with chaos, one of our instincts seems to be to spot, or to imagine, a simpler, recognizable order.

Of course, there's nothing like a 4-month-old to create chaos. A look about our house confirms that: unwashed bathrooms; toys scattered on surfaces like salt on a salad; unfulfilled lists of things to do; a pile of laundry to be thrown in the washer. But despite such disorder (or perhaps precisely because of such disorder), it's also surprisingly easy to spot certain patterns. Cleo, for example, almost always goes to sleep between 6 and 6:30, awakens briefly for a feeding between 1:30 and 2:30, and then awakens again between 5:30 and 6. She still naps 3 or 4 times during the day, and her naps are almost like clockwork: 35 to 45 minutes apiece. And her parents? We see the clock turn to 10 p.m. most nights, and then we're out within a few minutes.

Those are relatively obvious examples. But there are also subtler rhythms that have gradually come into focus, as well. Most days, for instance, I take Cleo for a walk in the Baby Bjorn, and we often stop at the rope swing in the nearby meadow. As we swing, one or both of the elderly folks who live (and have lived, since the Korean War) in the house on the edge of the meadow appear in a downstairs window, and watch for a short time. I see their silhouettes, but this is hardly Mrs. Bates in the bedroom; it's somehow instead a simple and comforting quiet conversation across generations.

After a few moments, we usually roll on, and another subtle pattern usually emerges. Almost always, Cleo's left hand finds a loop on the Bjorn, and holds tight for most of the rest of the walk. It's always her left; it's always without looking. It's a quiet order all its own, perhaps even unconscious at this point. But for that very reason, it appeals. We hear sirens nearly every night; this morning Cleo and I passed a dead squirrel, a condom on the sidewalk, and a team from the gas company drilling a hole in the road. There are complications, in other words, everywhere one looks. Which is part of the reason why, perhaps, we tend to appreciate a simple, well-ordered composition or melody so fully, and so naturally.