Random thoughts about amazing things

From my desk, I can see the corn grow. It’s tall, and a deep happy green. It is the tallest thing in my yard, second to the banana tree.

This morning, I followed a nature/science link on New York Times’ website, which talked about the scent powers of elephants. Followed by a feature of the Antarctic sea spider that walks around on the sea floor, while breathing with no lungs or gills.

The elephant can smell plant foods from many miles away, discerning between plants that are nearly alike. These animals also know the smell of tribes who spear them, and the tribes who do not spear them. Furthermore, they can walk over the earth and locate land mines. They know not to step on TNT. I would say they have super powers.

Oh, and speaking of super powers, the sea spider has a spiky, stick design with most key organs  spread out within narrow internal passages. The guts or digestive system helps with the bulk of the heart’s work.

To breath, they have pores. Their pores pluck the oxygen from sea water and transfer it into life and breathing once they cross into the shell of the spider. The spider didn’t invent this, it came loaded with this space technology, one might say. And as great as it is, they don’t even talk about it. Tweet about it. Make money off it. They just mind their own business until scuba divers are dropped through a hole in very thick ice, and collect them while wearing bulky polar wet suits.

At the start of the day, I also read an illustrated piece about all the space around us. Where are the aliens, it wondered, and why haven’t we found them, or they us? This has been a question on my mind lately, after seeing a Deepak Chopra talk, which among other things, discussed the mind-blowing number of habitable planets in our galaxy alone.

There are theories. Let’s cut to the chase of my favorite one. Maybe we are looking for us, and they aren’t like us. They don’t off-gas like we do, or send signals out into space, showing the wear and tear of human life. Another theory is, if they are just like us, they might already be extinct and no one is home now.

The talk around not recognizing far-away life got me wondering about not recognizing life on our own planet. We look past it, or organize it into being useful or not useful.

This day, with a fair amount of morning stimulus, got me thinking about things.

I went to work and talked with a man who can’t eat anything solid. He had cancer and in the treatment process, his molars were pulled; his throat radiated. Now nothing tastes at all good. He can’t chew, and his sensitive throat gags on solid food. His doctor sent him for some acupuncture to see what would happen.

Everyone wants to live, or most do anyway. Some adapt naturally and have never forgotten their old ways and skills. I think the elephants are this way. They keep passing on superpowers and wisdom. The sea spiders appear extremely calm as they skip across the bottom of the ocean floor, under ice. Breathing without lungs. There is no sign of panic.

This man was not panicked about his situation. He had lost the pleasure of taste and the enjoyment of food. His attitude was solid, his self view hopeful. He was up for trying.

This guy’s super power was showing up.

After talking with him, and because of how I started my day, a question presented itself: where is life where we are living? Drop the galaxy search for a minute, and drop the looking at tiny micro beings among us, and look at what is literally in front of our noses. Are we looking? Do we see it? How do we want to interpret it? Are we curious, afraid, threatened, inspired, confused? We can choose our own filter.

Choose with the eyes the most open. That is what the cosmos keep saying to me.

I took that with me for the rest of the day and let my nose sniff out everything and then pause and smell for a little longer, linger a bit, and feel amazed that I have lungs to breath.