Benoit B. Mandelbrot (2013). “Fractals and Scaling in Finance: Discontinuity, Concentration, Risk. Selecta Volume E”, p.16, Springer Science & Business Media
The music: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz0nIKtLzfyG8_5AoNYhrCNY5lRqqYFoR
Over the few months or so, my inner six year old has been very present to me. Up until the end of February 2022, I was able to talk to her like an adult would talk to any very Bright and highly anxious child. Between making lists of why we knew we were safe and watching lots of press briefings that I would spin for her in real time—between that and the new dog, she was mainly keeping her shit in the way back of my mental station wagon. And then, in what seemed like a flash, she was in my lap and I was just looking for a clear spot of windshield to see if we were about to crash or run off the road. So, I slowly pulled over to the side of the road to peel my inner six year old off my chest and my fingers off the steering wheel.
In my dreams, the six year old is always trying to drive the car, usually because no one else is driving it, and she knows that it’s the job of the person who sees the mess to clean it up. She has never yet made it right side up into the driver’s seat. She’s been trying for decades. Always the blue Ford station wagon. That bench seat, though.
But she also has more information than she knows what to do with, and sometimes it all just makes her stomach hurt. It feels like she forgot something or that maybe she did something bad without knowing it. She tells a grown up about this, and they ask her if she feels guilty, and to think about why she might feel guilty. And this is right around the time she starts to get bullied for being chubby. A second grade boy will call her Piggy Nose Girl, and she will remember that for ever. The pretty small girls in her class don’t let her sit with them because they went to kinder across town. She learns quickly that being nice to people does not guarantee you niceness back. And also that FUCK is a bad word and someone scratched it into the paint in the girls’ bathroom. She worries she will accidentally write this word or say it. That someone will MAKE HER SAY IT. Or that she will blurt it out for no reason at all. And she is not about to get into trouble on purpose. She just wants to be good. What she really wants is to be so good that she never even has to think about being good again.
She really wants to be good. That’s mostly because the six year old knows we are all about to die. She knows that she will be with Jesus after it happens, but is frankly also bummed out about missing her whole life. She knows this is not supposed to be a thing she says out loud because THE JOY OF THE LORD IS FOREVER. Anyway. She saw what would happen on the tv, mostly from the hallway. She knew it wasn’t really real because there were commercials, but it looked super convincing. Like, would they be able to get from the grocery to the post office ( our local fallout shelter) in time? Forget the fact that her house was nowhere near a first tier strike target. The six year old worries about it all the time. She worries she will be alone or that someone in her family might not make it home safe.
She has been mostly quiet since she saw The President and The Premier (Daddy said they used to be called Czars, and then he started talking about Decembrists and Trotsky and the Bolshevics and the Minshevics, and the six year old starts thinking about Little House on the Prairie and how no one on that show had to worry about bombs. They hadn’t even invented toilet paper, yet. Aunt Lu was busy making her a little house dress and a petticoat and bloomers and a bonnet. The six year old really hoped the Russians wouldn’t kill us all before she got to wear that dress).
She started poking her nose out while Grammy was dying. The one who knew how afraid she was in the grocery store and taught her to say Psalm 121 when she was scared or needed help. Because the six year old knows everything that I know, she really tries hard to stay still and out of the way. But one night while Grammy is dying, I read an article about the closest call of our lives—how on our fifth birthday, we almost all really did die in a nuclear exchange. The six year old yelled from the way back: I TOLD YOU AND YOU SAID I WAS JUST A SCARED LITTLE KID. WE ALMOST ALL DIED ON OUR BIRTHDAY. WHAT THE FUCK.
I looked right back at her, in the rear view. “Look, sugar. I’m really sorry. You were right and I was wrong. I promise to not doubt you. You’re smart. Little, but smart. And here’s the deal: you are always going to be right next to me. I won’t tell you lies or try to dress up scary things. You aren’t alone, and whatever happens to us, I promise to take good care of you.” She blows me a kiss and asks me to turn the radio back up.
She stayed back there, in the way back, singing along to whatever was on and looking through a book about all fifty states, and facts to go with each. (She thinks people who get carsick are big babies who will use any excuse for why they have to sit in the front seat EVERY TIME. How hard is it to just not throw up? And that time I threw up in the car dealership, the day we traded in the blue Ford I could never drive in real life or my dreams for the beige Tempo WAS A STOMACH BUG. I tried real hard to keep my lunch inside, because my parents were Talking Business with A Grown Up About Grown Up Business. And then I tossed all my cookies onto the highly polished and gleaming showroom floor. And suddenly, we were driving home in A BRAND NEW CAR.)
At some point in the first week of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the six year old went bananas. Like THIS SHIT IS BANANAS. She made me watch the news non stop for hours. She followed Twitter hashtags. She demanded we watch YouTubes. She keeps me up with all her questions. Mostly, she wants to know if we are going to be ok. And she tries hard to find different ways to ask it, like I’m some Magic eight ball.
Six year olds are still little enough to idolize grown ups. She watches too many news programs snuggled in the elbow crook of an adoring father who explains the news to her. He is crowned with pipe smoke, the incense of his offerings of love to me (and that includes a couple of well deserved and truly spectacular ass chewings of the 15 and 17 year old.)
As far as the six year old is concerned, her Daddy is the smartest person in the world. She wants to be that smart when she grows up. She loves making him proud and he is always easy to please. But he’s not here to do that.
There’s just me. Just me to hold her and explain things. And I have had to tell her a hard truth: sometimes grown ups do not have the answers you want them to have. Sometimes, more times than any of us are comfortable with, the grown ups don’t know any more than you do—can’t make sense of what is happening or even begin to predict what might happen next anymore than a highly aware six year old. Neither of us are satisfied with these bits of information. But we are trying to do better by each other. She reminds me to pray. I remind her to turn off the television and take a nap.
We are well aware that wherever we are is not on the map. Also, we ran off the edge of the map a while ago. Everything is just about trying to keep the group together—looking for any signs that we might be going the right direction, or at least not backward. At best, the six year old and I can agree that the world looks just as scary and scary in the same ways as ever.
Mixtapes From Babylon 