Playing Fair and Being Kind

MIND – BLOWN

On the eleventh of August 2016 just before midnight I was brushing my teeth here at The Castle in the royal bathroom. Something reminded me of the latest news that flossing is not considered an important part of oral hygiene nowadays. In fact some dentists have determined that flossing is a waste of time. What really came to mind for me is there have been several traditional or time honored practices pushed aside as our species progresses through time and space. When was the last time you used shampoo? Do you recall the “rinse and repeat” phrase? That was just a strategy to make you use the product twice as fast. I use whatever bar of soap is in the shower I’m using for the moment.

So I think this is worth investigating further and so I come here to my newly relocated desk and open the laptop to power up. While I’m waiting for the executive program to run through all its diagnostics and other geeky computer routines I let my gaze fall on a sheet of paper sitting atop the printer nearby. What I see is a tiny, tiny insect with wings. The insect, or tiny fly, is enjoying basking in the bright light of the desk lamp over its head. I spy the little thing and it occurs to me that I am unable to really see all the little pieces of it. I know it has a head, wings, legs and all the other parts of whatever that insects have. Maybe a thorax, abdomen, and several sets of eyes.

As I sit and wait for the computer to come on line I have time to examine, as closely as I can, this tiny insect and my thoughts turn to the incredible idea that although I cannot really see its eyes that they are still there. I wondered if I could find my old magnifying glass before the thing decided to leave and then I reckon I probably wouldn’t succeed in getting it all together without that happening. Sure enough after I’ve diverted my gaze to see what nearby there is to help me see, more clearly, this tiny creature, when I look back it has moved to the wall surface in front of the desk but far enough away that I have no chance to further examine it. I stare at it with less enthusiasm now. Just the same in my mind I was able to imagine the eyes and the space in between the eyes that would have, maybe, contained the brain that was governing its behavior and giving it some entertainment as it lounged in the light of the desk lamp. My mind was blown.

I recall a few phrases of Annie Dillard in one of her books that I read. She had the same fascination with creatures of the forest and in the earth. Crawling creatures that lived complete lives, just like us, using their senses to decide where to go, crawl, fly to investigate possibilities. She talks in microscopic terms of the anatomy and cellular makeup of the tiniest insects, how each piece is made of more and more pieces that all have structure and many parts that are completely structured and if seen through a device that would allow us to discern the smallest particles and parts we would see that the structures continue down the scale of size further and further. Finally after exhausting the possibilities she states the all are intricate parts, that there are no blanks. Imagine that. There are no blanks, no flat solid chunks used in the makeup of the living thing. All the pieces are made of fibers and connecting vessels that carry fluids or gasses, made of cells that are complex and finally simple but still made of intricate links and cells that by themselves are universes of material and suns and planets with spaces so vast in between.

This is what I was thinking when I looked at the tiny fly sitting on my desk. I wonder if that little bug knew that it had blown my mind. And then while I was immersed in the thoughts about that tiny little fly I noticed a smaller insect moving as if in space inside the lamp shade. It was the smallest spider I’ve ever encountered. No larger than the head of a pin it was scrambling within a tiny space of just a few millimeters with a length of webbing it had spun. I could see, mostly with my imagining eye, that it had legs that is was using to grab and hold onto an invisible strand of material. I had to go outside for a while to let my eyes focus far away on other things. I removed to a chair on the deck outside the door of The Castle. It was dark and my eyes were not able to see much but I looked up toward outer space and I saw stars knowing that some of those stars are really full galaxies far away. Galaxies that are so far across that it takes years for the light to travel edge to edge. In the space of a few feet I traveled from microscopic creatures to vast galaxies and my mind was filled with wonder.

G. M. Goodwin

now 12 August 2016