Touching Symbiogenesis

It's Odin's day . . . and a mailbox full of “bigness” . . .

Bill Monroe was born 112 years ago today in 1911. Called the "Father of Bluegrass," the master of the mandolin was born in Rosine, Kentucky.

Today is the 204th anniversary of Clara Schumann's birth. The pianist and composer was born in 1819 Leipzig, Germany.

The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us . . . when we start getting angry or denigrating ourselves or craving things in a way that makes us feel miserable, we begin to shut down, shut out, as if we were sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon [carved by the Watercourse] but we had put a big black bag over our heads. – Pema Chödrön in The Wisdom of No Escape.

No amount of material reductionist jargon is able to remove the marvel of Symbiogenesis. Our very cells are the haptic dance of single-celled organisms that blended to form eukaryotic building blocks. Symbiogenesis means “becoming by living together”. We become by living together. And by touching together. A self then, is a desire to fasten. To touch. Every time we inhale, we somatically affirm our desire to transform through contact: with scent molecules, oxygen, carbon-dioxide, viruses, bacteria, fungal spores. Touch is the seed of sight, smell, music, even the written word. Touch is the alchemy of your cells. Touch is the wave of photons that erotically, haptically, ties your eye to the very sun.

– Sophie Strand from Life is Haptic.