Physics lessons learned in my in-laws' house and a Miami bellstand

Boy, these Sicards do take a while before they actually take on the task of leaving. About fifteen minutes ago, Ray and Joan and the Mikes announced that they were leaving. They got as far as the living room. Now, it is 9:45 and I can still hear the voices in the living room behind me and there is no indication of their leaving. The conversations are still continuing. Amid the sound of glasses and plates being cleaned and the dishwasher going, there is more than enough conversational thread to go around. I am trying to figure out when they will actually leave. Not that I care that they leave anytime soon, but it is a puzzle which lasts for minutes and hours and seems to replicate itself every time I encounter them. Two years ago, I wrote a piece about the classic Sicard goodbye. Nothing has changed, save the location. The same people are "trying" to extricate themselves from the clutches of this house. Who knows when it will stop?

Is there some kind of weird gravitational pull? I see it's effect. Everyone is sitting, enjoying the moment and each other, then someone in the group makes a statement to the effect that they are going to leave the group. Sometimes, this is just words, since the person making the statement may not move at all. Other times, the person stands up, the others stand up. There is an odd dance created in which most participate.

Perhaps they move into a new room. The conversation continues. Not necessarily words of parting. No, on the other hand, it might just be a new thread in the conversation. But the bodies continue to orbit. They revolve. The orbits move, but the revolutions continue. New thoughts. New questions. New responses.

Meanwhile, I watch. I seem to be outside the gravitational pull. I move toward the door or watch them as they continue. Someone might think of something they forgot; they go and find the thing they forgot. Meanwhile, the orbits continue.

It can happen outside the Sicard sphere. Mark and Sharon were to leave at 2:00. Two o'clock came and went. Are they now in the Sicard sphere? Are their bodies susceptible to the pull?

Our problem, on the other hand, is caused by the failure to gather all of our things. Tomatoes. Cameras. Bags of this and that. We realize our forgotten things later, when we are on the road, about to head out on the road for home. When we return to the scene, nothing much as changed. Still conversational orbits continue, spinning. Few have left. Perhaps the orbits have exchanged bodies. Still, no one leaves. There seems to be a gravitational pull caused by the people's desire to continue communication which is affected by their attraction to each other. Despite their stated desires to leave the orbit, they continue to be attracted to each other by their desire to continue communication.


My father told me a story about one time when he found himself in Miami with a rental car, trying to leave the rental car and hop on a shuttle to Atlanta, via the airport. He was in a line of cars waiting for the bellman to remove the cars so they could leave for the airport. My father parked his rental car at the front of the line and approached the bellman's stand. He tried to explain to the bellman that his car needed to be processed and his luggage transferred to the shuttle for the ultimate trip to the airport. No one seemed to speak English. No one was moving. Everyone was caught in the orbit of the Spanish-speaking bellmen. No one could move away, escape the orbit.

I guess his problem was the opposite of the physics of the Sicard goodbye. In his case, the people could not communicate, so they were stuck in the growing orbit of the Miami bellstand. Everyone was moving toward the bellstand because that was the place where all of the rental cars were supposed to be received. At the same time, that was also the place where people escaped the orbit of the bellstand in order to go elsewhere. They were stuck by the combination of the pull of the bellstand and the inability of the people to process the needs of the persons through failure to communicate.

It is all entropy. People caught in the pull of the gravitational pull of the motion. One is at rest. The other is at rest. But the quality of the physical pull is different. In one, there is an attraction which is affected by the ability to communicate. The energy of the communication attracts the bodies in a small orbit from which they cannot escape. In the other one, the attraction of the bellstand, which is caused by its centrality of purpose, as a place to which the bodies come in order to pick up cars and leave them and board shuttles to escape their orbits is allowed to continue because of the failure to communicate between the bodies.

There are bodies at rest. One caused by the desire of the bodies to continue their communication. The other caused by the inability of the bodies to begin communication. If communication is energy then the two equations should be shown in this way:

Sicard Goodbye

E (entropy) = M (mass of bodies) [A (Attraction) + C (Communication)]

Miami Bellstand

E (entropy) = M (mass of bodies) [A (Attraction) - F (Failure to communicate)]

M(A+C)=M(A-C)

This is really weird. Really.

The oddity involved here concerns the fact that the result (entropy) is the same. However, the component of communication is the opposite value, since communication and failure to communicate are two opposing factors. It is strange.