THE TANGOING TREE

Finally realizing that David Quammen has discovered and expressed something world-changing and that I should stop resisting the buying of yet another book by Quammen, I crumpled and ordered "The Tangled Tree" even though the main premise is that there is no tree -- or if there is, it should be called "The Tangoing Tree" because it's all about movement.  Life is written on water.  Flowing.  Making boundaries one day and erasing them the next.

This time, in order to keep track, I also ordered a ZIP READ booklet with no author that is a 46 page distillation of what it legitimately calls "A Radical New History of Life".  Most journo's derivatives will be about David and his pet snake, since it's too cold for fly fishing and "catch and release"  This turns out to be hard on fish.  But not as hard as assimilating cutting edge science.

The actual content of the manuscript of the book is going to be easier to read, I'm sure, because there will be illustrations and human personalities.  This stuff is hard to get one's head around.  Basically it is the assertion that all boundaries have leaks -- cell walls, human epidermis, and so on -- which challenges identity and allows change, which is the essence of time morphing around and through us.  (Stop resisting!)

The code we call "genome" can be traced back through time so now we know the four mutations that had to happen to get animals from laying eggs instead of gestating babies in the body of the female, making it harder to just pop them out and leave them, as still done by a few humans.  (Those individuals tend to die out, which is inevitable when the code is lost here and there.)  There are many other little "sets" of insights.

This little "guide" is actually notes from the book that leaves out all the bios, something like the Jefferson Bible which is the Gospels with all the miracles removed.  The remainder is still pretty powerful, but I don't know of any published versions that only describes the miracles. Not to say there aren't any, esp in evangelical Sunday schools.  It would be problematic which language to use, since each written version would have implications.  I'm not sure which language describes which miracle.  I'm sure Sunday schools mostly stick to their own.

My personal problem is that my arm still hurts, it's still a cold-wave, and there are five tiny kittens squeaking in the birth box in the closet.  If they had been eggs they still would have hatched and have needed a box, which is a boundary.  Everything stinks for lack of a trip to the laundry.  But being amazed and challenged helps a lot.  This too shall pass.