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| Silvery Dawn, Ocean Beach |
It was good to see the silvery light of morning today, instead of the orange-brown glow of air pollution we've experienced the last week or so. And with rain on the way, and snow coming to the mountains, it feels like a new beginning is at hand. Also, when I suddenly awoke in the wee hours last night I sensed that I'd finally turned the corner on my journey through an influenza infection which inspired me to pull Planet of Microbes by Ted Anton off our bookshelf.
I've enjoyed encountering phrases highlighted in a previous reading, such as "most of the capabilities of plants and animals derived from bacteria. They make our oxygen and soil, recycle everything that dies, and create most of the processes, such as respiration and metabolism, on which life depends.... Other microbes in the human gut helped us to produce the vitamins we needed to survive."
"Identity is not an object, it is a process," says Lynn Margulis, whose groundbreaking idea that symbiosis is an integral part of the evolution of life was met with ridicule, and not all that long ago either. Even scientists hate to let go of a treasured dogma.
As for having the flu, it was also interesting to read that "our energy-producing mitochondria are descended from typhus-causing Rickettsia" (attributed to Michael Gray).
I've come to see the influenza virus infecting my body as a fellow traveler in the process that is life on Earth—a guest in my body whose departure I hope to joyfully celebrate very soon.
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| Minutes After the Silvery Dawn |
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| Lunar Eclipse of December 2011, Ocean Beach |
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| Tube Ride, Ocean Beach |
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| Luffenholtz Beach, Humboldt County |
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| Nautilus on the Half Shell |
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| King Tide, Big River, Mendocino, Dec. 21, 2022 |
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