(As it happens) I do know where the mushrooms are

In a random universe where chaos reigns we try to impose order a lot of the time quite successfully. It’s not unique to humankind to want order; bees, ants, meerkats and many other species have societal structures and hierarchies. Time once again to check the clock and plan where we are supposed to be.

Roads full of metal boxes, a flammable tank on wheels, the individual inside and a lot of unpredictable behaviour. Will they turn left or right, put faith in their indicator lights and hope they will follow the program? Be surprised there are not more accidents, more deaths each year on the roads, symbolic of society in general; it, with all the chaos, when all is said and done, functions very well. People are like the weather, unpredictable but patterns do emerge over the eons, so in a random universe where chaos reigns there is hope, better still, there is some certainty.

It was once said by someone about us, that the general public doesn’t know what is happening and it doesn’t even know it doesn’t know… the supermarket is a place where she works, she sees the randomness of it all on a daily basis, where chaos theory meets 2 for 1 cornflakes. Even though the aisles are clearly labelled no one knows where anything really is; customers could take time to look up and make sense of a little bit of information for themselves every now and then.

The background radio plays the same tiresome songs, the trolleys take on a life of their own, where people would not think to drop litter at home or in the street, would quite happily do so on a supermarket floor. She thinks to herself, is this where we are at, are we still in essence hunter gatherers but doing it in a hyper-reality disconnected from nature, apart from buckets of manufactured flowers for sale near the compost?

(As it happens) I do know where the mushrooms are

Perhaps it’s best not to know, and not even know you do not know, park your metal box, come in store to get your weekly shop and buy some flowers. As her shift nearly comes to a close, she responds to another customer request. As she does, somewhere out there in time and space an asteroid has crashed into a far off world. “Yes madam (as it happens), I do know where the mushrooms are.”