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Bon Journal

Brownian motion

It doesn't feel right. But I don't know what it is.

My architect friend walked around my living room. He paced around my dining room. He walked outside.

Finally, he said, "You have too many browns."

"I hate brown. I don't have any brown clothes. I don't even wear brown shoes," I said.

"Your floor is brown. Your door is a different brown. Your piano is brown. Your chair is a different shade of brown. Your .... "

No wonder I couldn't bear to do anything else in the room besides playing the piano. The cacophony of brown was deafening to my ear.

"... Your stairs are brown. Your picture frame is brown."

After convincing me that I'm suffering from a brown overdose, my friend suggested that I paint the fireplaces and staircase white and bleach my floor.

"But it's expensive, old and dark mahogany," I protested.

"That might be so," he replied wisely. "But look at the different shades of brown on the floor. These are scrap mahogany, left over from carvings, and made into floor tiles. Look at the different colours here."

In physics, brownian motion refers to the way particles move - and in finance, it refers to the way stock prices move - randomly. In my case, I've let the browns take over my life. Or perhaps I should call it "emotional brownout"!

19 September 2002 Thursday

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