WHILE I WAS LOOKING FOR A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON EARTHLY NEWS . . .
NASA photograph, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope
Winding up a week of not great news the leader of the free world sat down with the autocrat responsible for untold crimes against humanity and a devastating, ongoing war. Very little good news on Planet Earth.
Taken by Hubble, the photo shows “a small portion of the Rosette Nebula…5,200 light years away.” There are dark dust clouds and “just visible in the upper right of the dark cloud, a young star fires jets of plasma…”
Could you be descended from a rock? Rather than, say, an ape? Or, to put it another way: first the rock, then the ape. (No scissors/paper here.)
Personally, I’m drawn to rock molecules as forebears.
Bear with me on this. It’s not my idea; it came from an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that came from a new book titled Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life. Just the same way as perhaps we came from microbes in rocks before we came from apes — no offense to Mr. Darwin. Or to the Creator by whatever name.
For the record, I understand absolutely none of this. I began a less than stellar college career long ago with a D- in Human Biology, after which I switched my major to Art. A form of educational evolution, you could say. I will probably, as this story progresses, be typing a lot of questions into the search bar like, “What’s the difference between a microbe and a molecule?” Still trying to wrap my head around that one.
But how can you not love the idea that Planet Earth — our Mother Earth which itself came from somewhere, but that’s another story — germinated her little bits of dirt into creatures that beccame you and me?
Further, if we all evolved from little specks of dirt in rocks, doesn’t that more easily make us all pretty close kin, give or take a minor detail or two?
Consider this: “At some point not long after our planet’s genesis,” writes the distinguished scientist/journalist Ferris Jabr, who inspired this essay and whose web photo looks like he’s about 18, “in some warm, wet pocket with the right chemistry and an adequate flow of free energy . . . bits of Earth rearranged themselves into the first self-replicating entities, which eventually evolved into cells.” (Jabr rhymes with neighbor; you might want to remember the name.)
Fast forward a few eons. “Species best able to cope with changes in their particular habitat leave behind the most descendants, whereas those that fail to adapt die out.” Voila. Early pre-humanoids are beginning to pop up.
Annother few billion years, Oxygen and the ozone layer ooze out and, Hello blue skies!
“As I studied the interdependence of Earth and life,” Jabr writes, “I continually returned to an ancient and controversial idea: that Earth itself is alive.” This is, as many of us are dimly aware, the Gaia Hypothesis. Sort of a ‘We’re all in this Life together’ thing: dirt, creatures, skies, planet. (This article is not to be quoted for anything scientifically verifiable.)
Despite being clearly out of my depths, I cannot get over a compelling fascination with this idea: Mother Earth begets a clump of dirt which, after an eon or two or three or four begets you and me. Life is good, brothers and sisters.
Recently, walking up Webster Street in San Francisco I drew near a car that had just parked. The driver, a tall Black man with an air of distinction and broad smile, walked toward me a few steps ahead of a gray-haired Black woman I presumed to be his wife. We three paused in greeting, it being a sunshiny day with a jazz festival underway a block west on Fillmore Street.
“You remind me of my mother,” he said. No preamble, no irony, just a pleasant remark that might well have been, “Hello, how’s it going?”
“I think,” I replied as I quickly recovered, “that I’m the generic mother. I hope yours was a good one.”
“The best,” he said. “She was very beautiful.”
Well, if that won’t make your day I don’t know what will. We three kept walking in our different directions. Hopefully, their day was as festive as mine was from then on.
Which brings me back to Mr. Jabr’s book. Since it seems a little heavy for my right-brained self I am ordering the audio version (9 hours, 27 minutes.) This way I can listen in small snippets while walking in the sunshine, reflecting on the probability that my bypasser friend’s beautiful bronze skin is only a microbe or two away from my own wrinkly white.
A recent New York Times story confirms that dirt is good. (The real kind, not the political or social media kind.) Dirt even contains microbes beneficial to our mental & physical health. Who knew?
Actually, I did. Mud pies were always my beloveds. You can express yourself in mud: Pressed-leaf creations, happy faces or sad. If you’re angry you can just splat it back down with great force. Digging restores the soul, and occasionally creates gardens.
I taught my kids to wash up before meals, but otherwise to love Mother Earth. Even a little on the inside floors if I’m being honest. Didn’t Native Americans build immunities by ingesting bits of bad stuff? Don’t you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die? (Take your time.)
Please accept this seal of approval: Go ahead. Get grimy.
At a recent dinner party in San Francisco the conversation swung from gourmet recipes to trash politics to old Volvos — and back.
It was consistently engrossing, if not always optimistic, other than general agreement on the reliability of 1960s — 1970s Volvos. Guest ages ranged from twenties to geezers, including one nonagenarian. It was among this latter group, particularly, that there was dismay about the state of the union and the planet.
“If we don’t get really serious about addressing climate change,” remarked one among the elder group, “what else is going to matter? There won’t be any planet to care about.”
Wikipedia says that ice ages, “long period(s) of reduction in the temperature of Earth’s surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers” come around every 50,000 years, but I tend to believe this particular dinner guest even beyond my faith in Wikipedia. Therefore, I’m going with 70023.
Does anyone really plan to be around until 70023?
For my part, having reached a very advanced age already, I’d settle for another decade MAX.
October 2034 seems a perilous moment, assuming we get through 2024 unscathed. But 70024? Breathe deeply.
Somehow, contemplation of the universe — specifically including our lovely little Planet Earth — surviving just fine despite the degredations we inflict upon it for the next 68,000 years (please consider all calculations as right-brained approximations) is both encouraging and uplifting.
It also puts us humanoids in our places. Which is, insignificant.
I still think it’s incumbent upon us to try to save democracy, and address homelessness, and quit denying climate change, stuff like that.
