Monday, October 25, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Heideggar Figured it out First
The relationship between genes and visible traits is very different from the way in which it is usually presented to the public. The idea that a gene is a sequence of DNA that codes for a product, and variations in the DNA sequence can cause a difference in the product and hence in the phenotype, is just too simplistic. Coding sequences are only a small part of DNA, and DNA is just a part of the cellular network that determines which products are produced. When and where these products are produced depends on what goes on in other cells and what the environmental conditions are like. Cellular and development networks are so complicated that there is really no chance of predicting what a person will be like merely by looking at their DNA. Although it has considerable rhetorical and marketing power, the dream of genetic astrology is just that – a dream.
~Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, p. 67
Friday, October 15, 2010
A Poem A Plan (very rough draft)
i've been up all not but i'm FEELING FINE. yes, and this could be a GOOD or a really BAD sign. OR it just could BE.
when i'm like this it feels like my whole metabolism has sped up. i don't know if its my brain that's doing the churching, but every part of my body, every joint, every sinew, every pain, every pleasure, every desire, every will within comes so alive in this state and i feel *almost* that, if i were to look at the universe from this vantage point in just the right way, at just the right angle and just the right calm, i, like ram dass' guru, would truly kNOw EVERYTHING...
or perhaps it would all be an optical allusion.
for the time being, this is all neither hear nor there. now i seek to listen to my body'ss hum, to find her rhythm, to stroke ( ;-) ) her just right so that she comes alive like rose blooming for all to see.
but i can imagine this will take a long time. and maybe i'm past my prime. but as you know, once a rose blooms, that's it, kaput. it dessicates slowly and dies so, so lovely and falls to the ground to mingle with dirt and return to the earth from which she came.
but ah, so be a flower, blooming to the sun.
and perhaps i'm a ROSEBUSH that will have many blooms-i sure do have thorns-but for now i remind myself, calmly but sure to ENJOY LIFE AND LIVE IT!!!
but only in the right measure and only in the right time.
perhaps i'm not the bush or the rose-perhaps i'm the gardner, descendent of cain. if that's the case, i guess i have not been the best of gardners-i've let my anger get in the way, i've been distracted while prickly weeds grow-but hey, i'm a young one and learning to garden takes time (especially when you're both the plant AND the gardner)
so i'll tend me with care and water me regularly and make sure i get enough sun. but this plant is hardy ((s)he's proven this much) so i won't fret at the fungus are yell at the weeds. i'll just take it slow and learn what i can from the earth and her mysteries, from the books in their libraries, and from friends and from family and whoever will talk to me!
i'll learn and discern and dissect and construct and hope that in this chaos, this mess, good ideas reach the top and that'll i'll have the fortitude to actually pick them up.
because maybe, just maybe, if i pick up enough good ones, and act with intention with my heart tethered tight, this garden will glow and shining white light so others will say "huh, look at that" and come over to peek at roses and maybe have a chat. and who can say what will happen from that. all one can do is pray that there aren't many rats. though a few here and there can sure livin' things up.
so yes, that's a plan, a plan with some spunk behind. metaphor and reality mixing their medley. will it come to anything or not? either ways okay. because i shall always be here, yes always here shall we stay.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Moby Dick
Abandoned by my words I'm left alone
or I've become an aimless overflown
drifting river and in my murky mud
I drag the flotsam washed up by the flood:
old idioms exhausted vain pretences
like broken hedgerows signposts maybe fences.
Oh would the Master wisely grant the force
that channels deep, to lead a steady course
toward the sea, and would He fit the rhyme
to fringe my verse perfectly every time
ready for use by me the good disciple,
(for prosody I'd read His holy Bible),
as lazy Jonah shirked to no avail,
and then for three days rotted in the Whale,
I too went down and shared those deadly bays
of hot throbbing pain, but for thirty days,
for thirty years or three hundred, who knows,
to find, before my book will firmly close
and an even blinder and eternal
Whale shall swallow my last departing journal,
my real voice, to marshal every true
word into action, as He gives the cue,
to speak up loud as it is right and fitting
for all to hear (my sickly throat permitting)
until the powers, cosmic and Ninevean
will silence me and send me to oblivion.