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.
Tomorrow is never-not pending
It's Tews' day and Northerlies brought much needed rain to TulseyTown yesterday and overnight.
22 years ago yesterday morning 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes and attacked the United States.
Yesterday also marked the 138th anniversary of D.H. Lawrence's birth. The novelist, short-story writer, poet, and essayist, was born in 1885 Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England.
Today in 1846 Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning eloped.
It's the birth date of H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken. The journalist and editor was born in 1880 Baltimore, Maryland.
Mencken has been quoted as having called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." The same might be said of most of today's Repuglican party.
Soliloquy
It's Sol's day bringing another lovely pre-Fall day to TulseyTown . . .
My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, was born on this date in 1935 Maple Heights, Ohio.
Today is also the birth date of Stephen Jay Gould. The naturalist and science writer was born in 1941 New York City. A typical Gould quote attributed to him: “Homo sapiens [are] a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree.”
The Czech poet and novelist Franz Werfel was born in 1890 Prague,
“Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is the soliloquy.” – attributed to Franz Werfel.
from “Wild Geese”
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. – Mary Oliver, in Dream Work. The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986,