// The Song Remains The Same

saw them hurrying from either side
and each shade kissed another, without pausing,
Each by the briefest society satisfied.
(Ants, in their dark ranks, meet exactly so,
rubbing each other’s noses, to ask perhaps
What luck they’ve had, or which way they should go.)
— Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XXVI

Before I went back to grad school, I had been studying self organization [...]

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. [...]