looking at your watch a third time, waiting in the station for the bus.

sometimes it's the outer layer that is holding things together. like, with an egg, the shell is keeping a big mess inside. unless it is hard cooked in which case if you crack the egg, you will not reveal a mess. and, "mess" is a bit of a miscasting, i suppose, since the inside of an egg is actually neatly structured. the "mess" is that it won't stay put, it dribbles away. if you crack a raw egg into a bowl or cup or pan, you can keep it together. the bowl or cup or pan takes the role of the shell. but if you crack a raw egg onto the countertop or onto the floor, it will simply be a mess.

sometimes it's the inner core that is holding things together. i am not an atomic scientist, so i might not have this precisely correct, but it's my understanding that atoms are held together from the inside, by the nucleus. i know about electron clouds and how molecules are formed, so perhaps this analogy is not perfect, but the point is that sometimes it's the inside that creates the magnetism that holds together the loose parts. from the outside, there is disarray, but on the inside is order.

but, either way, there is chaos somewhere.