Some questions

Oh look, there are clouds outside the plane. There are endless plains made out of cloud outside the plane. There are nine bacteria for every human cell in your body, I just read. In my body. In the bacteria's body. Let's call it our body. And water. Most of it is water, right? Most of us. Just like the clouds, the plains of clouds. I can't tell you how comforting I find these facts. The bacteria and I cannot tell you. We are too busy, too distracted. We have too many thoughts, the bacteria and I. Most of them unutterable. Only some of them obscene. Our thoughts also are mainly water, mainly cloud. The boundaries are hazy. Water being water. The screens on the seaths inside the plane are showing images of the tornado cloud and of the post-tornado cloud. The tornado cloud is made of water but also of wind, which is air, only faster. It is made also of debris picked up along the way. Debris like cars and trees and hospitals. Debris like persons. An unmeasurable but surely significant percentage of the tornado cloud is therefore a clever swirl of water and bacteria and the occasional human cell. Just like the rest of us. On the screens on the seats inside the plane persons who have avoided becoming debris survey the post-tornado cloud debris. They hug their neighbors and greet their pets with tears. They plant flags in their debris. I am fairly agile (we are) as far as thinking goes, but this is hard to understand. What percentage of America is debris and what percentage is bacteria? Can debris's loyalties be known? And bacteria's? If they cannot, can ours? And what about the clouds, tornado clouds included? Why have we put no flags on them? By excluding them from this great polity, do we not exclude ourselves?

Everything

"Everything one needs to know is right out in the open."

—Renee Gladman, The Activist

Every Little Thing

"It was morning, yet it seemed to him that the day was ending, that the light was retreating and abandoning the furniture, the room, every little thing bit by bit. He understood then that what he lacked was not air or a clear view of things or Ada's body. The something missing was much more vast and obscure, something neither close at hand nor far away, rather running parallel. The work of doing without was incessant: gnawing, gnawing."

—Severo Sarduy, Firefly

Coronal Mass Ejection

If only every mass ejection were so pretty, right? Maybe pretty’s not the appropriate word—this occurred on May Day, a gargantuan wave of solar wind spitting matter (electrons, protons, plastic bags, empty Big Gulps, whatnot) and electromagnetic radiation outward from the sun. Towards, you know, the rest of us. No wonder I’ve been feeling weird all week: the magnetosphere’s in shambles. The video compresses events that in real time (forgive me), lasted about two and a half hours. I’ve been searching for the un-cut version, so far without luck. But you should know, per NASA: “the sun’s normal eleven-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in late 2013.” Something to look forward to. Also in helio-news, and perhaps more importantly: researchers announced last week that the core of the earth is hotter than the surface of the sun. About 6000 degrees centigrade, turns out. Look no further, omphalos-gazers, it’s getting hot in here. 

Flowers

"But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world—or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower: for would its kind not come up again in the spring? come up, if necessary, among, between, or out of—beastly inconvenient—the smashed corpses lying in strict composure, in that hush infallible and sincere?

"And was not this something to be thankful for?"

—Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha