(Futuyma pg 448)
Early taxonomists (predarwin) held what Ernst Mayr has called a "typological" or "essentialist" notion of species. Individuals were members of a given species if they sufficiently conformed to that "type" or ideal, in certain characters that were "essential", fixed properties, a concept descended fom Plato's "ideas".
Nevertheless populations ARE variable. Quite often the variation among specimens falls into discrete groups, or clusters, as in the case of the raven versus crow. These clusters, for early taxonomists, were species. Each had certain "essential" defining properies, such as the ravens's pointed tail, that varied only slightly. But often gradations between such clusters DID exist. For instance , carrion crows whcih are entirely black, differ from hooded crows which have a gary back and belly, EXCEPT in certain parts of Europe, where some specimens ARE intermediate.
the existence of such cases has led some authors to conclude that species are arbitrary constructs of the human mind imposed on a a continuuum of variation. Darwin for one, took this position.
There coexisted, even in the eighteenth century, another criterion: common descent. Offspring of the same parents were the same species, EVEN if they differed considerably (from each other or the parents). [this is important, and leads to subtle points].. the striped and banded forms of the California king snake known to be born to the same mother, represent a genetic polymorphism, not different species.
By the early 20th cent.. Mayr, in his Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) noted:
1) many, perhaps most, characteristics vary among the members of a single population of interbreeding individuals. Sometimes continuus quantitative variation; sometimes discrete like the king snake.
2) populations in different geographic locations usually differ in the mean of one or more characteristics. very often intermediate forms are found where such populations meet, providing evidence [?] that they interbreed.
3) what APPEARS at first to be a single, MORPHOLOGICALLY uniform species often proves to include two or more subpopulations that occupy the same area, but do not interbreed. these cryptic sibling species might be recognized on the basis of some form of reproductive barrier (different genetalia, different breeding seasons, etc..) for instance two treecreepers (birds) in central europe almost identical but for very different songs.
the abundance of variation within and between COMBINED with Darwin's view that all characters can keep evolving into more and more different characters led to the abandonment of the typological species concept. the biological species concept became more and more widely held. promulgated by the likes of Dobzhansky (1937) and Mayr (1942). Mayr defined it: "species are groups of actually or POTENTIALLY interbreeding poplations whcih are reproductively isolated from other such groups"
It has some drawbacks.
1) it only works in a particular slice of time. if you look at a branching lieage over time.. you can't test whether the population at time A could interbreed with the population at time B. these may be seperated into what are called chronospecies.
2) if a lineage forks, we do not know which fork... is it one lineage with a side lineage or is it 3 chronospecies...
3) of course it doesn't work for asexual populations
4) this is a definition in terms of populations, not individuals. chihuahuas don't (i don't think) mate with great danes, but in a population of dogs, chihuahuas can mate with dachshunds, which mate with i don't know my dogs! which mate with ... which mate with great danes. this last point opens up the whole can of worms! for instance Ring Species:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.html
Ring Species: Unusual Demonstrations of Speciation
By Darren E. Irwin
[blending! till they meet at the begining again. so all it takes is .... extinction in the middle!]
5) the definition of reproductive isolation is "those which are naturaly [?] reproductively isolated from each other by their own behavior" which is WHAT? their behavior depends on the environment no? so as individuals migrate to different environments what might happen? anyway there are plenty of populations who DON'T mate in their usual habitat who CAN be induced to mate in artificial environments and who's offspring is fertile.
these last two lead us to an important fact. many seemingly fixed boundaries CAN leak occasionaly either through modification of behavior (by environment or by mutation) or through slow leakage through roundabout intermediates (like the chihuahua and great dane, or like ring species.
6) many populations are geographically isolated and will never manage to interbreed even though if we brought individals from them together they WOULD. hmm what to say? this is like (5)!!! BSC says they are both part of the same species. but frankly i think that stinks of essentialism! the fact is that species maybe is a property of the whole biome not just property of the organisms's essence! hence i say if we are not to be essentialists we call those two different species. the environment is part of what defines the species. and certainly with time the two populations might diverge reproductively anyway.
hell, the fact is that species might be nothing at all!
Futuyma (pg 452) says it would be absurd to call every geographicaly isolated pocket of frogs a different species. this is similar to the problem with dandelions. who at some point in the past were sexual, but now have given it up and have split into thousands of pockets of nonbreeding slightly different populations. of course frogs occasionaly travel (by flood maybe) and these dandelions OCCASIONALY have sex...
LEAKS!
Baum and Shaw's genealogical species concept adds to this idea of leaks. (p452)
one thing we gotta mention now is that organisms are mosaics. genetically we are mosaics of thousands of discrete (almost, everything has messy exceptions) genes each in pairs, one from each parent. for each gene position on the chormosomes, in the population there might be many versions, in fact since we are diploid, even an individual organism can have two versions of a gene, one from each parent. these versions are called alleles. the gene is called a locus.
(of course it's very messy, not only can genes get mutations so that one of an offspring's allele can differ from its parent, you can have all kinds of mutations. for instance a gene can get duplicated! now where a parent has one gene called A332, the offspring has two of them from one parent and one from the other. in time this gets passed down and one of the copies can get a mutation and now some members of the population can have A332 and A332...)
the point is, that two subpopulations can be similar for SOME genes and different for OTHERS! each gene can evolve INDEPENDANTLY to varying extents.
so, genealogical species concept: after a population splits in two, each half has a mix of these different alleles for each gene. now whether alleles make it to the next generation is a chancy event, or it might be selected for. so eventually for gene 12444 a member of pop A might have alleles similar to pop B, while for gene 24432 a member of pop A will have alleles similar to pop A. so which genes do we look at to tell whether these two populations are distinct species or not?
this by the way is the case for ALL human populations. can't tell if there are distinct races for ALL genes. we all split up TOO recently, and still too much MIXING.
the genealogical species concept is we wait till the populations keep going until enough alleles get lost through randomly not breeding into the next generation so that pop A has only alleles in common with it for ALL (or MOST?) genes and pop B has alleles in common with it.
more problems with BSC:
1) narrow hybrid zones. there are cases where what looks like different species meet at a border and for a narrow zone at that border you find hybrids. there is evidence of pairs like this existing for some time, yet remaining distinct. some kind of mechanism is allowing SOME hybridization to take place, but the hybrids are not as fit as the parent species and the zone of hybridization doesn't spread through the seperate populations. this does NOT mean that individual genes, cant travel from one population to the other! the overall mix in the hybrid might be rather unfit, but single genes from populoation A might still eventually spread throughout population B. LEAKS!
2) this can even happen with two populations sharing the same teritory. just that hybrids are VERY RARE.
the question is what mechanism maintains this!
plants however work different than animals. and in fact the BSC may not be as useful for plants as animals. for instance there are many plant groups that rampantly hybridize all over the place like Quercus (oaks) and even worse: Crataegus (hawthorns)
so here is the point since different genes can have different propensity to spread from one population to another... some genes might affect something minor like color. some genes might affect something major like adaption to new niches. and some genes might affect MATING BEHAVIOR.
and now we have to talk about reproductive isolation.
what are the things that can cause this:
1) geographical isolation
2) behavioral difference: what time of day to mate, on which plant to mate, which way to dance, which color plumage you like, what kind of song you learn...
3) anatomical diff: maybe your penis is shaped the wrong way..
4) biochemical mechanisms that block the viability of sperm or pollen
5) difference in genetics (chromosomes ) that make the zygote unable to form
6) differnece in genes that make development botch up somehwere down the road
7) differences in genetics that make the offspring unable to perform mieosis and thus make viable eggs or sperm and thus GRANDCHILDREN are impossible.
biology is fun, no?
each of these mechanisms CAN be the product of a single mutation so potentially this can happen in one generation. for instance in plants, it is common that an offspring gets the wrong number of chromosomes (double or 2/3 etc..) and can only therefore mate with another offspring with the same mutation.
What's the upshot? the dicotomy is: are species a property of the whole history of the whole population structure or is species a property of some innate properties of individual organisms?
the Eldredge and Gould claim that a large part of the fossil record consists of: for layer after layer fossils of a certain type wander around a mean of morphology for a coupla million years and then switch to a nother mean quickly (in geological time) and then stay wandering around the new mean. (punctuated equilibrium) or the type splits into a FEW distinct types which each then wander around their distinct means...
there are two poles and probably everything inbetween:
1) individuals reproduce to randomly varying offspring and the set of individuals wander higgledy piggledy all over the space of all possible varieties. but since each niche has finite carrying capacity there is arbitrary extinction. therefore after awhile gaps appear between lineages. i don't know how much natural selection is needed for this to happen.
2) the logic of development, physiology, ecology act as feedback loops which encourage mutations of only certain types to persist and rejects other mutations, until a combination of mutations creep in that throws the system into a new set of feedback loops keeping the system around a new norm (which would give punctuated equilibrium) This would correspond to typological species concept.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
On Discovering The Chemical Origins Of Life: Dissecting Nanofilm Fossils Of Chemical Reactions!
At some stage in Geochemistry chemical reactions acccumulate heredity! Somehow the catalaysts have to couple their existence to their product! So if there is a catalyst that produces some organic compound that HELPS BRING MORE OF THAT CATALYST TO THE REACTION SITE then that catalyzed reaction will explode!
In a sense it's not a matter of the improbability of life but the fact that since the ULTIMATE product, life, is so much better at capturing the most common form of energy flow around, sunlight, then those reactions that moved TOWARDS life would have outcompeted the millions of other possibilities! Is this RIGHT? It's teleological after all? Is the origin of life simply an optimization problem solved by simulated annealing?
So for the origin of life we got to search for the reactions where metal ions will catalyze a reaction that produces a product that helps bring that ion into the reaction arena, or that uses up a reactant that keeps that ion from coming into the reaction arena. Or teams of reactions that help each other out...
Are there any FOSSILS of this era left? hmm... either embedded in current biochemistry, OR in the rocks.
So all sorts of geochemistry was happening. We have to search the rocks that are left from 4.5billion years ago to 3.6billion years ago and analyse each one for HOW IT FORMED. We have to find the ones of sedimentary origin and reconstruct the chemical reactions and their environment that produced them. We might be talking ULTRAMINUTE geochemical fossils! What could POSSIBLY be their chances of having survived to the present???? What we are looking for is the result of some of these geochemical reactions that gets buried beyond reach before the new round of reactions got to the results to rework them!
Could it all be possible; (A) that enough of these has survived? (B) that we can FIND them, they might be widely scattered thin films smaller than bacteria! (C) reconstruct what happened!
Well, science has become a 400 year tradition of ULTRAMASTER CRAFTSPEOPLE with very sophisticated instruments! We'd have to dissect ancient strata atom by atom, perhaps! We'd have to do a LOT of simulations! We'd have to explore ALL MANNER of combinations of crazy reactions between organic compounds and minerals in all kinds of conditions! It'd be a LOT of work. Is it Worth it?
Knowing how life is a natural consequence of the chemistry we can see, play with today? that the universe is so stable that it worked 4billion years ago with the same laws as it works today? That we ARE PART OF this universe and in reconstructing the creation that happened 4billion years ago, we have hope of BECOMING PART OF THE NEXT 4 BILLION YEARS OF THIS CREATIVE UNIVERSE STORY?
God! in order to accomplish that promise, we'd have to become wise. Or clever. Well, either way it means, if we want to survive that long, learn to explore new niches and cooperate! That means GET OFF THIS PLANET!
To explore new niches means colonize other places outside this Earth and get away from each other for awhile, then cooperate with each other's colonies. That's the way it always is!
I imagined this scenario in high school: If humanity is to survive, we have to get off this planet, get into a historic cycle of hopping from planet to planet, where each time we get to a new planet, our technology is basically lost, start from scratch, but we retain history of our social arrangements and as technology keeps resetting, our social wisdom steadily grows over 10s of thousands of years... hmm... not bad.
Just as some clever reaction cycles ultimately covered every niche on this 16million square miles of Earth, life can eventually cover the universe?
more on Homo sapiens learning to master the universe:
http://blackskimmer.blogspot.com/2008/06/social-insects-created-amazing-tropical.html
In a sense it's not a matter of the improbability of life but the fact that since the ULTIMATE product, life, is so much better at capturing the most common form of energy flow around, sunlight, then those reactions that moved TOWARDS life would have outcompeted the millions of other possibilities! Is this RIGHT? It's teleological after all? Is the origin of life simply an optimization problem solved by simulated annealing?
So for the origin of life we got to search for the reactions where metal ions will catalyze a reaction that produces a product that helps bring that ion into the reaction arena, or that uses up a reactant that keeps that ion from coming into the reaction arena. Or teams of reactions that help each other out...
Are there any FOSSILS of this era left? hmm... either embedded in current biochemistry, OR in the rocks.
So all sorts of geochemistry was happening. We have to search the rocks that are left from 4.5billion years ago to 3.6billion years ago and analyse each one for HOW IT FORMED. We have to find the ones of sedimentary origin and reconstruct the chemical reactions and their environment that produced them. We might be talking ULTRAMINUTE geochemical fossils! What could POSSIBLY be their chances of having survived to the present???? What we are looking for is the result of some of these geochemical reactions that gets buried beyond reach before the new round of reactions got to the results to rework them!
Could it all be possible; (A) that enough of these has survived? (B) that we can FIND them, they might be widely scattered thin films smaller than bacteria! (C) reconstruct what happened!
Well, science has become a 400 year tradition of ULTRAMASTER CRAFTSPEOPLE with very sophisticated instruments! We'd have to dissect ancient strata atom by atom, perhaps! We'd have to do a LOT of simulations! We'd have to explore ALL MANNER of combinations of crazy reactions between organic compounds and minerals in all kinds of conditions! It'd be a LOT of work. Is it Worth it?
Knowing how life is a natural consequence of the chemistry we can see, play with today? that the universe is so stable that it worked 4billion years ago with the same laws as it works today? That we ARE PART OF this universe and in reconstructing the creation that happened 4billion years ago, we have hope of BECOMING PART OF THE NEXT 4 BILLION YEARS OF THIS CREATIVE UNIVERSE STORY?
God! in order to accomplish that promise, we'd have to become wise. Or clever. Well, either way it means, if we want to survive that long, learn to explore new niches and cooperate! That means GET OFF THIS PLANET!
To explore new niches means colonize other places outside this Earth and get away from each other for awhile, then cooperate with each other's colonies. That's the way it always is!
I imagined this scenario in high school: If humanity is to survive, we have to get off this planet, get into a historic cycle of hopping from planet to planet, where each time we get to a new planet, our technology is basically lost, start from scratch, but we retain history of our social arrangements and as technology keeps resetting, our social wisdom steadily grows over 10s of thousands of years... hmm... not bad.
Just as some clever reaction cycles ultimately covered every niche on this 16million square miles of Earth, life can eventually cover the universe?
more on Homo sapiens learning to master the universe:
http://blackskimmer.blogspot.com/2008/06/social-insects-created-amazing-tropical.html
The Social Insects Created The Amazing Tropical Forests Of This Earth, How Can We Match Their Feat?
Some sunday morning musings on cooperation vs competition in evolution and human history:
The popular idea has always been that it's a jungle out there, red in tooth and claw, survival of the fittest and all that. And of course Humans have always heaped glory upon their warriors for entering that fray!
But the fact of the matter is that the more time you spend cometing with your neighbors the LESS time you are spending RAISING KIDS. RAISING KIDS is what evolution is about, not competing. So there are two strategies that life has come up with for spending less time competing so it can raise kids:
1) divide up the environment by exploring niche space and diversifying. if i stick to hunting rabbits and you stick to collecting nuts, we don't have to compete!
2) cooperating! I'm very fond of the social insects, and the reason why the ants rule the tropics is because they cooperate! I know that Honeybees for instance have AMAZINGLY low infant mortality in their hives, compare that to the mass of insects that lay 100s of eggs to have maybe 1 survive to adulthood! Ants take care of the place, they recycle all the materials, they spread out the trees and keep species diversity high, in fact there are over 8,000 different species of ants, they keep their OWN diversity high! And with the trees spread out so far, it takes the social stingless bees to pollinate them, making trips miles long just to pollinate a single species of tree when it blooms.
then i got to wondering about the chemical origins of life, and our next 4billion years of history ahead of us co-creating the universe. I thought up a scenario where we could possibly find ancient chemical fossils of the origins of life and learn how it happens, maybe learn to do it ourselves. But it would take a LOT of work. Do we have the TIME to accomplish the task? Can we avoid a really DIRTY world war III? How can we slowly mature and explore the potentials of Homo sapiens?
How does cooperation or niche exploration vs competition relate to our current dilema? Well, Homo sapiens IS the cooperating critter PAR EXCELENCE! that's why we are coming to rule the whole planet just as the ants rule the tropics! unfortunately whereas the ants probably took 10s of millions of years to learn the art of ecosystem governance, We tried to accomplish the feat a TAD too quickly: 100,000 years maybe? 10,000 years? We are not doing so well at it! While the ants and bees have built up amzingly diverse tropical forest over the past 10s of millions of years, we are taking them down in a mere coupla thousand!
Some ants even form supercolonies! (But so far I know of NO examples of TWO DIFFERENT species of ants COOPERATING! That's odd. There certainly are plenty of symbioses out there between other species. I even recall that there are two different species of Rock Hyraxes that nest together and raise each other's kids! (odd story, needs to be looked into!) )
Though we liberals are resisting this Global economy kicking and screaming, perhaps ultimately (after ironing things out and surely along the way MANY disenfrachised will suffer) it will provide a mechanism for cooperation between major ideological groups of us now currently fighting?
I don't know.
The other option is niche diversifcation. The Earth is pretty full, we are all crammed up against each other, there is no room to experiment with new languages, new cultures, new forms of government...No room to start out from scratch! The last such experiments where in australia and north america, and those have pretty much played out! We NEED MORE ROOM! Think of what a VAST PLAYGROUND this earth was for those tiny simple ants to explore! But we humans are VAST creatures. First of all we are BIG. Second of all we tend to coagulate into colonies of 100s of millions, covering an ENTIRE CONTINENT, that's INSANELY BIG, few species of ants come close to matching that! But mostly OUR MINDS are vast. An individual can imagine whole ecosystems in there! We can imagine mastering the cosmos itself. We need a larger arena to grow up in!
Well, there is a lot of real estate out there in the cosmos! Science is nice, technology is nice, but what we need is some WISDOM in how to be human beings! We need more TIME AND ROOM to do experiments in human civilization!
In high school i imagined the following scenario: If we were to send a ship of colonists out to colonize another planet, think of what they are starting from: scratch! Perhaps like ants sending their mated queens into the wind hither and thither, 100s of colonist ships spreading randomly out there exploring. maybe a few find some habitable planets in a coupla hundred years, and when they land? i tried to imagine what it would take to reproduce our massive network of industrial/technological abilities that we take for granted!
forgedaboutit! they are gonna be struggling to grow crops, build shelter, have kids and survive! What i hope is that we can set up a new cycle: reset our technological level to almost zero every coupla hundred years as we hop to the next planet, but retain the knowlege, the history of our sociology, psychology, educational and governing methods. By resetting the technology each time we will allow the experimenting in social interactions to go on slowly. And continuing to spread out the human experiment, will give us some space from each other, a chance to get our bearings and then have new rounds of economic and cultural interactions on vaster scales!
I think we can slowly explore the human potential! And that potential is VAST. Just as some some tiny colonies of simple bacteria, each a ten thousandth of an inch wide, 4billion years ago have come to spread across the 16million square miles of Earth and RESHAPE it, I can fully imagine us becoming gods, learning to master the foundations of the cosmos and reacreating new universes!
The popular idea has always been that it's a jungle out there, red in tooth and claw, survival of the fittest and all that. And of course Humans have always heaped glory upon their warriors for entering that fray!
But the fact of the matter is that the more time you spend cometing with your neighbors the LESS time you are spending RAISING KIDS. RAISING KIDS is what evolution is about, not competing. So there are two strategies that life has come up with for spending less time competing so it can raise kids:
1) divide up the environment by exploring niche space and diversifying. if i stick to hunting rabbits and you stick to collecting nuts, we don't have to compete!
2) cooperating! I'm very fond of the social insects, and the reason why the ants rule the tropics is because they cooperate! I know that Honeybees for instance have AMAZINGLY low infant mortality in their hives, compare that to the mass of insects that lay 100s of eggs to have maybe 1 survive to adulthood! Ants take care of the place, they recycle all the materials, they spread out the trees and keep species diversity high, in fact there are over 8,000 different species of ants, they keep their OWN diversity high! And with the trees spread out so far, it takes the social stingless bees to pollinate them, making trips miles long just to pollinate a single species of tree when it blooms.
then i got to wondering about the chemical origins of life, and our next 4billion years of history ahead of us co-creating the universe. I thought up a scenario where we could possibly find ancient chemical fossils of the origins of life and learn how it happens, maybe learn to do it ourselves. But it would take a LOT of work. Do we have the TIME to accomplish the task? Can we avoid a really DIRTY world war III? How can we slowly mature and explore the potentials of Homo sapiens?
How does cooperation or niche exploration vs competition relate to our current dilema? Well, Homo sapiens IS the cooperating critter PAR EXCELENCE! that's why we are coming to rule the whole planet just as the ants rule the tropics! unfortunately whereas the ants probably took 10s of millions of years to learn the art of ecosystem governance, We tried to accomplish the feat a TAD too quickly: 100,000 years maybe? 10,000 years? We are not doing so well at it! While the ants and bees have built up amzingly diverse tropical forest over the past 10s of millions of years, we are taking them down in a mere coupla thousand!
Some ants even form supercolonies! (But so far I know of NO examples of TWO DIFFERENT species of ants COOPERATING! That's odd. There certainly are plenty of symbioses out there between other species. I even recall that there are two different species of Rock Hyraxes that nest together and raise each other's kids! (odd story, needs to be looked into!) )
Though we liberals are resisting this Global economy kicking and screaming, perhaps ultimately (after ironing things out and surely along the way MANY disenfrachised will suffer) it will provide a mechanism for cooperation between major ideological groups of us now currently fighting?
I don't know.
The other option is niche diversifcation. The Earth is pretty full, we are all crammed up against each other, there is no room to experiment with new languages, new cultures, new forms of government...No room to start out from scratch! The last such experiments where in australia and north america, and those have pretty much played out! We NEED MORE ROOM! Think of what a VAST PLAYGROUND this earth was for those tiny simple ants to explore! But we humans are VAST creatures. First of all we are BIG. Second of all we tend to coagulate into colonies of 100s of millions, covering an ENTIRE CONTINENT, that's INSANELY BIG, few species of ants come close to matching that! But mostly OUR MINDS are vast. An individual can imagine whole ecosystems in there! We can imagine mastering the cosmos itself. We need a larger arena to grow up in!
Well, there is a lot of real estate out there in the cosmos! Science is nice, technology is nice, but what we need is some WISDOM in how to be human beings! We need more TIME AND ROOM to do experiments in human civilization!
In high school i imagined the following scenario: If we were to send a ship of colonists out to colonize another planet, think of what they are starting from: scratch! Perhaps like ants sending their mated queens into the wind hither and thither, 100s of colonist ships spreading randomly out there exploring. maybe a few find some habitable planets in a coupla hundred years, and when they land? i tried to imagine what it would take to reproduce our massive network of industrial/technological abilities that we take for granted!
forgedaboutit! they are gonna be struggling to grow crops, build shelter, have kids and survive! What i hope is that we can set up a new cycle: reset our technological level to almost zero every coupla hundred years as we hop to the next planet, but retain the knowlege, the history of our sociology, psychology, educational and governing methods. By resetting the technology each time we will allow the experimenting in social interactions to go on slowly. And continuing to spread out the human experiment, will give us some space from each other, a chance to get our bearings and then have new rounds of economic and cultural interactions on vaster scales!
I think we can slowly explore the human potential! And that potential is VAST. Just as some some tiny colonies of simple bacteria, each a ten thousandth of an inch wide, 4billion years ago have come to spread across the 16million square miles of Earth and RESHAPE it, I can fully imagine us becoming gods, learning to master the foundations of the cosmos and reacreating new universes!
Friday, May 30, 2008
I Plucked a Cell of Me and Filled it With Yolk
well,
I plucked a cell of me and filled it with yolk.
and folded in memories of my mother and father.
and i chose me a man to strip myself bare with.
and i chose him to become a suckling child with.
i chose me a man to become sweaty with
a man to incite my egg to grow.
and i became slimy inside, and he put himself in me
and we set to scratching our itches to swells of excitement
to set the passage ways squirting and yearning
and he thundershowered millions of raindrops into me
swimming little critters of himself into me,
mixed memories of his fathers and mothers into me
and I rippled with pleasure calling them deeper
to join with myself, my eggself if they could.
and they raced with each other and they with fought each other
and they swam for a day
till they landed on the yolky shore of my eggself
and she chose only one and she ate him
and they joined themselves to be you.
and all his other selves died, and i expelled them.
and you, the lucky one,
started out like a mushroom,
then you swelled to a jelly fish
then you folded into a worm and you almost died,
as your brother did when he folded the wrong way, and i expelled him.
but you rippled into a fish finally
swimming in my watery womb
behind my belly button memory of my mother.
but you weren't really a fish,
your gills didn't work to breath in my waters
couldn't breath the oxygen dissolved in my waters,
there was no krill in my wombsea to eat
so i wove myself to you again
and i bled into you and you bled into me. and you almost killed me.
then you became a newt.
then you became a mouse.
then you became a scratching kicking puppy and it was time to let you out.
so i pushed and you held on
and i pushed harder and you screamed silently kicking
and i pushed and i dumped out my wombwaters leaving you soggy,
and i screamed
and it was hell,
an all night wrestling match,
and i might have hated you for a moment or two
till i finally tore you from me bleeding placenta
and pushed you into the world all bloody and slimy, and i almost died again.
and our shared arteries were severed
and your muscles thought fast
and closed like fists around them forever
separating our bloodtides lest you bled to death
and your eyes blinked in the light for the first time
and you felt the cold dry air for the first time
and you had to cough the warm womb water from your lungs
to breath in the fiery oxygen for the first time
and you yelled your lungs into breath.
and i fainted.
and you woke up to your own long frightening journey.
and i grew great sweat pimples from my chest into breasts
and filled them with milk from my fat
and you swam, a fish again, on my belly
and you sucked my milky waters and i warmed you.
we tried to stay together, you,
my fish swimming in my breasty sea,
but dammit you kept growing.
first you were a fish,
then you were a larva with giant oggling laughing head,
then your eyes focussed,
then your hands grasped,
then you learned to eat
and my seeping springs of milk ran dry.
then your fingers became intelligent.
then you got on your feet and walked from me to explore the world.
and you imagined yourself into a separate being and feared the night.
and that's where you came from
I plucked a cell of me and filled it with yolk.
and folded in memories of my mother and father.
and i chose me a man to strip myself bare with.
and i chose him to become a suckling child with.
i chose me a man to become sweaty with
a man to incite my egg to grow.
and i became slimy inside, and he put himself in me
and we set to scratching our itches to swells of excitement
to set the passage ways squirting and yearning
and he thundershowered millions of raindrops into me
swimming little critters of himself into me,
mixed memories of his fathers and mothers into me
and I rippled with pleasure calling them deeper
to join with myself, my eggself if they could.
and they raced with each other and they with fought each other
and they swam for a day
till they landed on the yolky shore of my eggself
and she chose only one and she ate him
and they joined themselves to be you.
and all his other selves died, and i expelled them.
and you, the lucky one,
started out like a mushroom,
then you swelled to a jelly fish
then you folded into a worm and you almost died,
as your brother did when he folded the wrong way, and i expelled him.
but you rippled into a fish finally
swimming in my watery womb
behind my belly button memory of my mother.
but you weren't really a fish,
your gills didn't work to breath in my waters
couldn't breath the oxygen dissolved in my waters,
there was no krill in my wombsea to eat
so i wove myself to you again
and i bled into you and you bled into me. and you almost killed me.
then you became a newt.
then you became a mouse.
then you became a scratching kicking puppy and it was time to let you out.
so i pushed and you held on
and i pushed harder and you screamed silently kicking
and i pushed and i dumped out my wombwaters leaving you soggy,
and i screamed
and it was hell,
an all night wrestling match,
and i might have hated you for a moment or two
till i finally tore you from me bleeding placenta
and pushed you into the world all bloody and slimy, and i almost died again.
and our shared arteries were severed
and your muscles thought fast
and closed like fists around them forever
separating our bloodtides lest you bled to death
and your eyes blinked in the light for the first time
and you felt the cold dry air for the first time
and you had to cough the warm womb water from your lungs
to breath in the fiery oxygen for the first time
and you yelled your lungs into breath.
and i fainted.
and you woke up to your own long frightening journey.
and i grew great sweat pimples from my chest into breasts
and filled them with milk from my fat
and you swam, a fish again, on my belly
and you sucked my milky waters and i warmed you.
we tried to stay together, you,
my fish swimming in my breasty sea,
but dammit you kept growing.
first you were a fish,
then you were a larva with giant oggling laughing head,
then your eyes focussed,
then your hands grasped,
then you learned to eat
and my seeping springs of milk ran dry.
then your fingers became intelligent.
then you got on your feet and walked from me to explore the world.
and you imagined yourself into a separate being and feared the night.
and that's where you came from
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Khoshekayim v'khoshekhim: Primordial Darkness vs. Curtain Darkness
this is my ongoing notes on a discussion of yhvh talking from light and darkness in deutoronomy 5:19 to 23
moshe is recounting the scene at sh'mot 19, so we need to go BACK.
let's go to the beginning:
sh'mot 3:2
v'yera mal'akh %&$** 'alaiv b'labat 'esh mitokh has'neh. v'yar' v'heneh has'neh bo'er b'esh v'has'neh 'einenu 'ukhal.
v'yomer moshe 'asura na v'er'eh 'et hamar'eh hagadol haze, madua' lo yiv'ar has'neh.
v'yar' &*%$$^& ki sar lir'ot. vyikra' eleiv 'elohim mitokh has'neh, v'yomer moshe moshe, v'yomer hineni.
ok this is where it starts. how does *%%^& call? by peaking someone's curiousity. *^%%$ did not bludgeon moshe over the head, in fact you cant SEE a flame in broad dayligh! you can only see it in the contrasting darkness inside a bush! and even then, it is not obvious and &%$&% is pleased that moshe was WATCHFUL and CURIOUS!
so this flame in the darkness of a s'neh! That's the prefered mode of mal'akhei &%%^& fireflies in the night.
s'neh and sar (to turn) both with samekh.
a bush which is burning but is not consumed. this is an image for something. the heart? the jewish people? a coal? looking into burning coals is a confusing thing, various levels of contrast between light and darkness
now 13: 21 v#$#@ holekh liphneihem yomam b'amud 'anan (both ayin column of cloud) lankhotam haderekh, vlayla b'amud 'esh l'hair l'hem.
13:22 lo yamish 'amud he'anan .. liphney ha'am.
ok, they have &&*%%$ in a cloud (darkness?) by day and *&$$# in a fire (light) by night. $#$$@ is a pillar, a beacon, and it's primary property is contrast, to show the way. no araphel yet.
next installment, the scene at the split sea, HEAVY!
oh right here spelled out:
14:20 the 'amud moves behind the camp of yisrael to protect from the chasing egyptians:
v'yavo bein makhaneh mitzrayim 'uvein makhaneh yisro'el v'y'hi he'anan v'hakhoshekh v'y'ir 'et halayla v'lo karav ze 'el ze kol halayla
what it looks like depends on who's looking at it.
whoah! this is a heavy scene! the jews are encamped against the sea. they sea the egyptians coming at them. the pillar starts out as a cloud but then the text says night, night is falling. for the egyptians it remains a cloud of darkness, for the jews it becomes a pillar of light lighting the night. yhvh says to moshe, don't just stand there! split the seas! this is birth! run.
24: v'yhi 'ahsmoreh haboker (this took ALL NIGHT) v'yashkeph *&$#% 'el mukhana mitzrayim b'amud 'esh v'anan 'et makhana mitzraiym.
woah here he's looking through to the egyptians throgh a pillar of fire AND cloud.
v'yaham 'et makhana mitzraiym. threw them into a tumult.
this is so dense! and there is the kheved elohim going on too. making the chariot wheels too heavy to turn, but egypt will know that i am yhvh when i'm 'heavyified against pharoa. damm i still don't understand this kheved concept.
then there is the yad gadol image.
the water swallowed the egyptians to death. and then right afterwards in some kind of penance, the waters refused to give the israelites life, they went thirsty and couldn't find water to drink. so much rich imagery tangled up!
MARX BROTHERS AT HAR SINAI:
ok, 19:
now they are at sinai, the har at khorev (khet resh vet, but the protectors are kheruvim, khof, resh vet hmm..)
moshe goes up, but no burning bush anymore or is that at the top? by now the little burning bush is a huge thunderstorm of fire atop the mountain? it's got to attract a whole swarm of people!
curious that yethro begins this scene. he brings zippora back to moshe. only when zipora is with him can he go up to yhvh?
so he goes up, then yhvh tells him what to tell the people so he goes down and tells them. then he goes up agaiin to tell yhvh
19:9 yomer %$^% el moshe: ba 'eleikh b'av he'anan (both ayin) ba'avur yishma' ha'am b'dabri 'imakh v'gam bkha ya'aminu l'olam. (ooh curious switch in genders for moshe)
so then yhvh tells moshe to go down and prepare them. yhvh will come down, keep the people from going up.
( b'moshekh hayovel. at the blowing of the horn. in 18:17 jetrho says to moshe why are you b eing counsel for ALL the people youu will naval tival yourself out wear yourself out. and cain's brother who dissipated into the soil is hevel.)
16: b'hiyot haboker v'yhi kolot 'uvrakim v'anan kaved 'al hahar v'kol shophar (different word for horn) khazak m'od
v'yoze moshe 'et ha'am likrat ha'elohim min hamakhana.
v'yityatzvu' (?) b'takhtit hahar.
v'har sinai 'ashan (ayin) kulo miphney asher yarad 'eleiv yhvh b'esh.
v'ya'al 'ashanu k'eshen hakivshan v'yekherad kol hahar m'od. smoke went up like smoke of a furnace and the har trembled.
this is remeniscent of b'reishit 15:17 when yhvh makes the covenant of split animals with sleeping abram. but it uses different words: v'hine tanur ashan (different word for oven) v'lapid 'esh (different word for flame than at the s'neh at s'neh it's labat for flame similar sound) 'asher 'avar bein hadzarim ha'ela.
UP DOWN UP DOWN, this whole scene.
(is this what yaakov saw when he dreamt the angels going up and down the ladder?)
shophar gets louder, moshe speaks and yhvh answers in a kol, or outloud.
then yhvh came down to the top of har sinai,. called moshe up, and moshe goes up. he tells moshe to go down. (it's comical, no? the marx brothers could have done this!) warn the people in case they break through. but let the kohanim approach.
but moshe says the people is not able to go up because you said hagbel the mountain, limit it. (confusion is setting in)
yhvh said lekh red go go down, then you come up you with aaron with you. but don't let the kohanim and the people break through. It's CHAOS it's BIRTH! push pull push pull!
and moshe went DOWN.
finally delivery: and god says the ten commandments.
IT'S ISRAEL WHO IS NOT CONSUMED BY THE FIRE
20:18
v'kal ha'am ro'im 'et hakolot v'et halapidim (ah here are the lapidim from abram's animal kiln) v'et kol hashophar v'et hahar 'ashan
and the people saw, and moved and stood at a distance and said to moshe, YOU speak with us so we may listen but let 'elohim (they percieve god as 'elohim here not as yhvh!) not speak with us or else we'll die.
v'moshe nigash (?) 'el ha'araphel (here's the araphel) asher sham ha'elohim.
then yhvh tells moshe to say some curious stuff one more time: you have seen that i've spoken from the skies (?) so don't make gods of silver with me and dont make gods of gold for yourselves. but make an alter of adama and if you do make a mizbe'akh of 'avanim don't cut 'em with a metal impliment (sword). and don't show your weenie to them either!
that's it. then reams of laws for pages.
no, there is more, at 24, more weirdness:
yhvh says to moshe come up with aaron, nadab and abihu and seventy elders (not kohanim) and moshe will come over ALONE to yhvh and they shal not come over tand the people shall not come up.
then moshe came (down?) and told the people all the reams of laws and the people in one voice said we'll do the things that yhvh has spoken.
then moshe wrote them.
then the next day builds 12 pillars, sacrifices reads the document again, the people say we will do and we will listen.
ok, now the wierd stuff, the people are below at the 12 pillars and moshe and aron nadab abihu and 72 elders (6 per tribe half of 144 curious) go up and they SAW god.
v'takhat ragleiv k'ma'aseh livnat hasapir (resonant with dont let your privies show above the alter stones and here we are describing GOD's alter stones below his privies!) 'uk'etzem hashama'im latohar.
and he did not put his hand to the chiefs. v'yekhezu 'et ha'elohim (hey i thought it's not supposed to be i -it but i -thou! 'ET elohim. odd that they let this pass) and ate and drank. envision?
then yhvh says to moshe come up and i'll give you stone tablets... and moshe and joshua his attendant got up... and to the elders sit for us here until we come back down. (this is remeniscent of the akeda!) and moshe went p to the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. and k'vod yhvh settled on mt sinai and the cloud coverd it six days. and he called to moshe on the seventh day from inside the cloud.
24:17 'umar'eh k'vod yhvh k'esh 'okhelet b'rosh hahar l'einei b'ney yisra'el. (consuming fire, DID it consume the mountain? moshe saw that the fire did NOT consume the s'neh)
and moshe was in the mountain 40 days and 40 nights
and he tells him how to make the mishkan. ending with shamar hashabat. and gave him the lukhot ha'edut.
meanwhile, 40 days is too much and the people forget themselves and demand gold images of gods from aaron, who appeases them.
and yhvh spoke to moshe go, go down because YOUR people whom you brougt UP from egypt has shikhet. (ah, there is another use of the word shakhat! maybe not breed lustily, maybe it merely means deteriorates. or maybe it means do something hatefull, or turn back on a promise...)
v'yikhar aphi b'hem v'akhalem. his anger will fire at them and consume them. there is that consume thing again, now it is the people israel who will be consumed by the flame. but NOT SO, the flame keeps burning in israel, but has YET to consume them fully.
***
THAT'S the image! the flame is our struggle, our attempts our failures our reaching our falling yet we are not consumed by it but refined. THAT'S god.
****
and that's the primordial darkness.
and moshe parries
v'yikhal moshe: conciliated, saved the people who shakhat, JUST AS NOAKH CONCILIATED AND SAVED ALL FLESH WHO SHAKHAT!
what men and women these are, christians are such wimps with their fawning before not even god but his seet son! turning the other cheek so groveling before an all powerful god! hah!
so moshe and joshua come down the mountain. this time joshua comes down with him unlike yitzkhak with abraham, however unlike with abraham, moshe fights god and says, "no, don't kill the children"
then odd: they hear sound, singing not of victory not of defeat but just singing they hear. odd commentary!
so now moshe flares out like the raging bull as if the fires of his own rage burn the golden calf and he himself stomps it to dust!
then an accusation of aaron as in gan eden to khava. and a harsh punishment, he does not wipe out the people but he does execute many. harsher than the punnishment at gan eden!
then moshe goes BACK UP and asks god to bear their sin. what exactly does that mean? he says wipe me out rather than bear their sin, but god says he will only wipe out those who sinned against him. and he struck them.
then they go.
ugh there is so much.
the amud anan is still at the mishkan where moshe sees god. then they have a little love fest where moshe finally yells out let me see you! and god says ok, and moshe comes up and god passes so moshe can see his back his kavod passing and gets new tablets and when he comes down his face is burnt to horn and it horrifies the people so he has to wear a veil over his face when the people come to see him.
moshe is recounting the scene at sh'mot 19, so we need to go BACK.
let's go to the beginning:
sh'mot 3:2
v'yera mal'akh %&$** 'alaiv b'labat 'esh mitokh has'neh. v'yar' v'heneh has'neh bo'er b'esh v'has'neh 'einenu 'ukhal.
v'yomer moshe 'asura na v'er'eh 'et hamar'eh hagadol haze, madua' lo yiv'ar has'neh.
v'yar' &*%$$^& ki sar lir'ot. vyikra' eleiv 'elohim mitokh has'neh, v'yomer moshe moshe, v'yomer hineni.
ok this is where it starts. how does *%%^& call? by peaking someone's curiousity. *^%%$ did not bludgeon moshe over the head, in fact you cant SEE a flame in broad dayligh! you can only see it in the contrasting darkness inside a bush! and even then, it is not obvious and &%$&% is pleased that moshe was WATCHFUL and CURIOUS!
so this flame in the darkness of a s'neh! That's the prefered mode of mal'akhei &%%^& fireflies in the night.
s'neh and sar (to turn) both with samekh.
a bush which is burning but is not consumed. this is an image for something. the heart? the jewish people? a coal? looking into burning coals is a confusing thing, various levels of contrast between light and darkness
now 13: 21 v#$#@ holekh liphneihem yomam b'amud 'anan (both ayin column of cloud) lankhotam haderekh, vlayla b'amud 'esh l'hair l'hem.
13:22 lo yamish 'amud he'anan .. liphney ha'am.
ok, they have &&*%%$ in a cloud (darkness?) by day and *&$$# in a fire (light) by night. $#$$@ is a pillar, a beacon, and it's primary property is contrast, to show the way. no araphel yet.
next installment, the scene at the split sea, HEAVY!
oh right here spelled out:
14:20 the 'amud moves behind the camp of yisrael to protect from the chasing egyptians:
v'yavo bein makhaneh mitzrayim 'uvein makhaneh yisro'el v'y'hi he'anan v'hakhoshekh v'y'ir 'et halayla v'lo karav ze 'el ze kol halayla
what it looks like depends on who's looking at it.
whoah! this is a heavy scene! the jews are encamped against the sea. they sea the egyptians coming at them. the pillar starts out as a cloud but then the text says night, night is falling. for the egyptians it remains a cloud of darkness, for the jews it becomes a pillar of light lighting the night. yhvh says to moshe, don't just stand there! split the seas! this is birth! run.
24: v'yhi 'ahsmoreh haboker (this took ALL NIGHT) v'yashkeph *&$#% 'el mukhana mitzrayim b'amud 'esh v'anan 'et makhana mitzraiym.
woah here he's looking through to the egyptians throgh a pillar of fire AND cloud.
v'yaham 'et makhana mitzraiym. threw them into a tumult.
this is so dense! and there is the kheved elohim going on too. making the chariot wheels too heavy to turn, but egypt will know that i am yhvh when i'm 'heavyified against pharoa. damm i still don't understand this kheved concept.
then there is the yad gadol image.
the water swallowed the egyptians to death. and then right afterwards in some kind of penance, the waters refused to give the israelites life, they went thirsty and couldn't find water to drink. so much rich imagery tangled up!
MARX BROTHERS AT HAR SINAI:
ok, 19:
now they are at sinai, the har at khorev (khet resh vet, but the protectors are kheruvim, khof, resh vet hmm..)
moshe goes up, but no burning bush anymore or is that at the top? by now the little burning bush is a huge thunderstorm of fire atop the mountain? it's got to attract a whole swarm of people!
curious that yethro begins this scene. he brings zippora back to moshe. only when zipora is with him can he go up to yhvh?
so he goes up, then yhvh tells him what to tell the people so he goes down and tells them. then he goes up agaiin to tell yhvh
19:9 yomer %$^% el moshe: ba 'eleikh b'av he'anan (both ayin) ba'avur yishma' ha'am b'dabri 'imakh v'gam bkha ya'aminu l'olam. (ooh curious switch in genders for moshe)
so then yhvh tells moshe to go down and prepare them. yhvh will come down, keep the people from going up.
( b'moshekh hayovel. at the blowing of the horn. in 18:17 jetrho says to moshe why are you b eing counsel for ALL the people youu will naval tival yourself out wear yourself out. and cain's brother who dissipated into the soil is hevel.)
16: b'hiyot haboker v'yhi kolot 'uvrakim v'anan kaved 'al hahar v'kol shophar (different word for horn) khazak m'od
v'yoze moshe 'et ha'am likrat ha'elohim min hamakhana.
v'yityatzvu' (?) b'takhtit hahar.
v'har sinai 'ashan (ayin) kulo miphney asher yarad 'eleiv yhvh b'esh.
v'ya'al 'ashanu k'eshen hakivshan v'yekherad kol hahar m'od. smoke went up like smoke of a furnace and the har trembled.
this is remeniscent of b'reishit 15:17 when yhvh makes the covenant of split animals with sleeping abram. but it uses different words: v'hine tanur ashan (different word for oven) v'lapid 'esh (different word for flame than at the s'neh at s'neh it's labat for flame similar sound) 'asher 'avar bein hadzarim ha'ela.
UP DOWN UP DOWN, this whole scene.
(is this what yaakov saw when he dreamt the angels going up and down the ladder?)
shophar gets louder, moshe speaks and yhvh answers in a kol, or outloud.
then yhvh came down to the top of har sinai,. called moshe up, and moshe goes up. he tells moshe to go down. (it's comical, no? the marx brothers could have done this!) warn the people in case they break through. but let the kohanim approach.
but moshe says the people is not able to go up because you said hagbel the mountain, limit it. (confusion is setting in)
yhvh said lekh red go go down, then you come up you with aaron with you. but don't let the kohanim and the people break through. It's CHAOS it's BIRTH! push pull push pull!
and moshe went DOWN.
finally delivery: and god says the ten commandments.
IT'S ISRAEL WHO IS NOT CONSUMED BY THE FIRE
20:18
v'kal ha'am ro'im 'et hakolot v'et halapidim (ah here are the lapidim from abram's animal kiln) v'et kol hashophar v'et hahar 'ashan
and the people saw, and moved and stood at a distance and said to moshe, YOU speak with us so we may listen but let 'elohim (they percieve god as 'elohim here not as yhvh!) not speak with us or else we'll die.
v'moshe nigash (?) 'el ha'araphel (here's the araphel) asher sham ha'elohim.
then yhvh tells moshe to say some curious stuff one more time: you have seen that i've spoken from the skies (?) so don't make gods of silver with me and dont make gods of gold for yourselves. but make an alter of adama and if you do make a mizbe'akh of 'avanim don't cut 'em with a metal impliment (sword). and don't show your weenie to them either!
that's it. then reams of laws for pages.
no, there is more, at 24, more weirdness:
yhvh says to moshe come up with aaron, nadab and abihu and seventy elders (not kohanim) and moshe will come over ALONE to yhvh and they shal not come over tand the people shall not come up.
then moshe came (down?) and told the people all the reams of laws and the people in one voice said we'll do the things that yhvh has spoken.
then moshe wrote them.
then the next day builds 12 pillars, sacrifices reads the document again, the people say we will do and we will listen.
ok, now the wierd stuff, the people are below at the 12 pillars and moshe and aron nadab abihu and 72 elders (6 per tribe half of 144 curious) go up and they SAW god.
v'takhat ragleiv k'ma'aseh livnat hasapir (resonant with dont let your privies show above the alter stones and here we are describing GOD's alter stones below his privies!) 'uk'etzem hashama'im latohar.
and he did not put his hand to the chiefs. v'yekhezu 'et ha'elohim (hey i thought it's not supposed to be i -it but i -thou! 'ET elohim. odd that they let this pass) and ate and drank. envision?
then yhvh says to moshe come up and i'll give you stone tablets... and moshe and joshua his attendant got up... and to the elders sit for us here until we come back down. (this is remeniscent of the akeda!) and moshe went p to the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. and k'vod yhvh settled on mt sinai and the cloud coverd it six days. and he called to moshe on the seventh day from inside the cloud.
24:17 'umar'eh k'vod yhvh k'esh 'okhelet b'rosh hahar l'einei b'ney yisra'el. (consuming fire, DID it consume the mountain? moshe saw that the fire did NOT consume the s'neh)
and moshe was in the mountain 40 days and 40 nights
and he tells him how to make the mishkan. ending with shamar hashabat. and gave him the lukhot ha'edut.
meanwhile, 40 days is too much and the people forget themselves and demand gold images of gods from aaron, who appeases them.
and yhvh spoke to moshe go, go down because YOUR people whom you brougt UP from egypt has shikhet. (ah, there is another use of the word shakhat! maybe not breed lustily, maybe it merely means deteriorates. or maybe it means do something hatefull, or turn back on a promise...)
v'yikhar aphi b'hem v'akhalem. his anger will fire at them and consume them. there is that consume thing again, now it is the people israel who will be consumed by the flame. but NOT SO, the flame keeps burning in israel, but has YET to consume them fully.
***
THAT'S the image! the flame is our struggle, our attempts our failures our reaching our falling yet we are not consumed by it but refined. THAT'S god.
****
and that's the primordial darkness.
and moshe parries
v'yikhal moshe: conciliated, saved the people who shakhat, JUST AS NOAKH CONCILIATED AND SAVED ALL FLESH WHO SHAKHAT!
what men and women these are, christians are such wimps with their fawning before not even god but his seet son! turning the other cheek so groveling before an all powerful god! hah!
so moshe and joshua come down the mountain. this time joshua comes down with him unlike yitzkhak with abraham, however unlike with abraham, moshe fights god and says, "no, don't kill the children"
then odd: they hear sound, singing not of victory not of defeat but just singing they hear. odd commentary!
so now moshe flares out like the raging bull as if the fires of his own rage burn the golden calf and he himself stomps it to dust!
then an accusation of aaron as in gan eden to khava. and a harsh punishment, he does not wipe out the people but he does execute many. harsher than the punnishment at gan eden!
then moshe goes BACK UP and asks god to bear their sin. what exactly does that mean? he says wipe me out rather than bear their sin, but god says he will only wipe out those who sinned against him. and he struck them.
then they go.
ugh there is so much.
the amud anan is still at the mishkan where moshe sees god. then they have a little love fest where moshe finally yells out let me see you! and god says ok, and moshe comes up and god passes so moshe can see his back his kavod passing and gets new tablets and when he comes down his face is burnt to horn and it horrifies the people so he has to wear a veil over his face when the people come to see him.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
On Killing A Mouse
at the deli today we found a mouse trapped in a sticky trap. i think all people who have ANYTHING to do with sticky traps should also have to experience the slow and disgusting death on a sticky trap. so what to do? i didn't have the frame of mind this time to put it out of it's misery, say by chopping it's head off, or smashing it's little brains in. so i put him in the freezer better way to die than a day and a half starving frightened shitting on herself stuck to a sticky trap.
a few years ago i was battling with some mice in my room for the right to sleep at night. i set a trap for them to wake me up in the middle of the night and would catch 'em and dump them out the window. (1st floor). one morning i can't remember what but i shut a drawer and crushed one. it was awful. probably she was someone's mother, a mammal, sensual, caring for her kids. i don't know how to build new mice, the best i can do is produce sperm who don't last very long after swimming.
when i want to learn obout some insects, i have to freeze them, or bust open a gall to see what grubs live inside it. sometimes i don't do this then. it is difficult. the main thing about life on earth is that life eats life to live, anyway.. but i find it difficult to take life.
when i was a kid, i heard some radio interview about people who grew and slaughtered their own animals, so i thought i would try it that summer, i caught, killed and cooked a frog. wasn't pleasant, hard to tell when a frog is dead.
i'm mostly vegetarian for a number of reasons.
but i'm never perfect. alas.
i think yhvh too, is horrified about the fact that the life he created eats life to live. I think that's what a lot of halakha is about. what do you do with this fact that we are life that eats life to live and are eaten also (in one way or another).
and rakhmanut? you know, the rekhem (womb) is a very dangerous place. somewhere between 15% and 50% of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion! life constantly experiments with ITSELF and in the process often gets it wrong.
now humans in general are appalled by the fact that delicate amazing craftsmanship of living beings like dragonflies are also MERELY FOOD! this appals most of us and makes us desire a heavenly existence. much religion is a result of this horror.
animals eat animals. in fact at root life is a cycle: molecules come together with high energy bonds, then molecules come apart and release energy and back around again. life always cycles building, tearing down. it is the way.
otherwise you are an eternal quartz crystal. not so interesting.
so the point of Judaism is not to try to fly off into peter pan world, but to engage in this embarrassing and difficult world of life.
a few years ago i was battling with some mice in my room for the right to sleep at night. i set a trap for them to wake me up in the middle of the night and would catch 'em and dump them out the window. (1st floor). one morning i can't remember what but i shut a drawer and crushed one. it was awful. probably she was someone's mother, a mammal, sensual, caring for her kids. i don't know how to build new mice, the best i can do is produce sperm who don't last very long after swimming.
when i want to learn obout some insects, i have to freeze them, or bust open a gall to see what grubs live inside it. sometimes i don't do this then. it is difficult. the main thing about life on earth is that life eats life to live, anyway.. but i find it difficult to take life.
when i was a kid, i heard some radio interview about people who grew and slaughtered their own animals, so i thought i would try it that summer, i caught, killed and cooked a frog. wasn't pleasant, hard to tell when a frog is dead.
i'm mostly vegetarian for a number of reasons.
but i'm never perfect. alas.
i think yhvh too, is horrified about the fact that the life he created eats life to live. I think that's what a lot of halakha is about. what do you do with this fact that we are life that eats life to live and are eaten also (in one way or another).
and rakhmanut? you know, the rekhem (womb) is a very dangerous place. somewhere between 15% and 50% of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion! life constantly experiments with ITSELF and in the process often gets it wrong.
now humans in general are appalled by the fact that delicate amazing craftsmanship of living beings like dragonflies are also MERELY FOOD! this appals most of us and makes us desire a heavenly existence. much religion is a result of this horror.
animals eat animals. in fact at root life is a cycle: molecules come together with high energy bonds, then molecules come apart and release energy and back around again. life always cycles building, tearing down. it is the way.
otherwise you are an eternal quartz crystal. not so interesting.
so the point of Judaism is not to try to fly off into peter pan world, but to engage in this embarrassing and difficult world of life.
Buzzing Sphinx Moth Caterpillar: sketch from my gradeschool nature notebook
buzzing sphinx moth
Abbot's Sphinx moth larva on Grape vine. Sphecodina abbotti. 7cm long .8cm wide, 4 prolegs and one at end. 11 segments each having 2 green spots on each side. [then something i can't read] rest is brown. eye shape thing instead of horn at tail. real eyes are colored dull green and brown. eats grape leaves. shits grubby looking pellets.
Very quick acting and vicious when bothered a lot. will curl up like a cobra except its head held underneath and the tail with eye/horn waving up. buzzes nicely when mad.
I definitely remember many sphinx moths from my youth, the feel of their musculature, and the way their skin felt. But alas, i don't recall this buzzing one. Wonder if I can find one again...
Abbot's Sphinx moth larva on Grape vine. Sphecodina abbotti. 7cm long .8cm wide, 4 prolegs and one at end. 11 segments each having 2 green spots on each side. [then something i can't read] rest is brown. eye shape thing instead of horn at tail. real eyes are colored dull green and brown. eats grape leaves. shits grubby looking pellets.
Very quick acting and vicious when bothered a lot. will curl up like a cobra except its head held underneath and the tail with eye/horn waving up. buzzes nicely when mad.
I definitely remember many sphinx moths from my youth, the feel of their musculature, and the way their skin felt. But alas, i don't recall this buzzing one. Wonder if I can find one again...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
