The dark side of brilliance

We prize and value intelligence but I had a disturbing thought watching a special on monkey-hunting chimps last night.

The purpose of intelligence in nature, at its most basic, is to kill.

Whether it's a dog or a dolphin, a monkey or a man, nature's purpose for a better brain is to improve the odds of a successful hunt.

Sure, people now use their brains to paint pictures and erect skyscrapers, but we only have time for such diversions because we have become the most effective killers on the planet, having eliminated our every natural rival and enemy except disease and having learned how to keep our meat on hand in a stockyard until we're ready to chop it up for the table.

Mom's journal

Sweetie and I read a few pages in my mother's old journal last night.

She (my Mother) describes Her earliest memories: a chilly house where a person dressed in a hurry around the wood-burning stove; Her own Mother's struggle with polio; riding horses around the neighborhood.

Such are memories of an age that has gone forever; the first two, thankfully; the last, sorrowfully.

A day of death

My aunt-in-law called this afternoon, asked if I would dig the grave for her cat tonight. It died at a good old age, 18.

So I carved out a hole in the cold clay of her backyard and gently lowered the little box into it.

I drove home through the darkness, thinking about the old saying that nothing is sure in life except death.

In my front yard lay the body of a raccoon.

I don't know what happened to it. Nobody could have hit it with a car way back here and no cat would survive a fight with a beast like that. At least it will not have to face the cold winter that is blowing into Virginia.

I carried it into the woods and, for the second time this day, dug a hole in the ground and lowered a small body into it, into the earth that accepts all things that have come from Her, at the end of their brief lives.

Eternal

Eternal.

From the Latin root aevum, an age - i.e., ageless.

Hebrew equivalent: olam.

What is eternal? The material substance that forms my body today, was shaped ages ago in the furnace of a star and a billion years from now, might again be part of a star or perhaps make up a few molecules of some planet's atmosphere, perhaps a billion light years from where I now sit.

Will my consciousness or some kind of soul persist in some other realm, some heavenly sphere, long after my mortal components have been recycled? Of what substance, if so, will it be formed?

The Greeks did not believe their gods were eternal: they had a birth from an earlier generation of elemental beings. The Judeo-Christian God, however, is decisively aeveum, olam, without beginning of days or end of years.

Eternal.

Yet the scientist who smiles condescendingly at such a conception, must also admit that there are limits to his or Her own understanding, what has been, what will be, what science knows about eternity.

Thought for the day

Submitted in a letter to National Geographic, published in the November 2007 issue:

"The suffering will not begin to end until we treat the living world with the humility necessary to bring all our knowledge of its subtlety and intricacy to bear on these problems."

-- Attributed to Rachel Carson, by letter-writer Marcia Phillips.


What do you think this means?

Return from oblivion Part II

I finally got to escape into the woods today -- I have been craving this hike for weeks.

I checked the holly by the wood's edge for berries -- I'm trying to see if its a boy or a Girl tree. Then visited the log where I found oyster mushrooms a few weeks ago. Nothing on it but slime.

No flowers in bloom, not even any asters. The forest is closing up shop for the season.

Every year I check the little fringe tree on the slope by the creek to see if it will finally produce the blue berries that it's supposed to. Still none.

Something hard beneath my shoe, upon examination, looked an awful lot like a hickory nut so I searched around and finally had my first glimpse of a mature hickory tree -- all I've seen in this woods before were saplings.

Tried to get a picture of a little orange spider who posed very patiently for Her portrait but my camera wouldn't focus.

Tonight I made friends with tamarind. I've enjoyed the juice before but never tried it any other way. Found a Balinese recipe for marinating chicken in tamarind sauce. Thought I would try it out.

Finding tamarind was tougher than I thought. My neighborhood redneck grocery of course didn't have it -- but neither did the fancy grocery store up by the mall. So I went to the Asian grocery a few miles away.

"Tamarind?" I asked, not sure how much English they would understand.

"Fruit? Or candy?" the Lady asked. By fruit She meant a big dark block of compressed tamarind. That looked fine so I happily carried it home and went to work in the kitchen. You mix it with boiling water, crushed garlic, pepper, coriander and salt. Marinate the chicken in it for an hour, then deep fry.

Sweetie won't normally eat a whole chicken breast, not being a glutton like I am. But She ate every bite on Her plate this time and licked the bones. I think She now likes tamarind chicken, too. It was good with a scoop of garam masala seasoned rice and some spiced banana bread for dessert.

A good meal took the bitter edge off the news this weekend that we have to replace the whole damn furnace. Probably have to take out an equity line to pay for it.