I think outside the box.

 I'm job hunting, which is to say, I am filling out beau coups of applications and sending out the resume, in hopes that someone will find me remotely attractive. But, as with my love life, I feel chilled to the bone with rejection.

But that's life! On to the next taboo subject, eh? 

I posted a little while ago a blog which had dissected a disappointing article by this writer who I had the privilege of seeing more and more in the coming weeks. Her articles have been a wealth of some of the more interesting and worthy news. Art, science and all things intellectual, she shares in a tiny space many things which sort of network like a brilliant mind. I am no longer in a position to criticize and have traded in my critical script for the poor clothes of the admiring amateur. 

The more recent things I have read that have been of great interest to me have led me today to do a little revision of the unfortunate, or perhaps lucky, depending on your outlook, selection I'd posted which has said writer looking out of character. Her name is Maria Popova, and her busy writing has had me entertained some weeks now.

One of the last to really draw me in was an article about trees. Actually, it was about an enduring mark left on Alan Turing, a genius mathematician whose boyhood introduction to nature left him with wonder to work out and helped shape his brilliant mind.

Inside the mind of the genius is a little place we call wonder. It is the place where the imagination is free to roam without the general's evil eye, the snobs disdain at stepping out of bounds, and the aloof, who do not see or care to see. Inside the mind of a genius, in his field of vision, he sees that which can be, even when most see the impossible.

I, being in a world of very small, very indifferent people, can see him there, far off. He is contemplating the tree. He is amazed at its ability to grow, at the mystery of life it holds. And surprisingly for us both, it is only partially alive. As we humans shed our dead cells in layers of skin and nail and hair, so trees are complex organisms that make use of their fading parts. Only the thin layers of their inner mechanisms flow with life. This intrigued me as much as Turing and set me off on a whirl wind adventure through the forests and onto cliffs where the oldest and most majestic trees are reaching into the sky. These famously known Redwood trees are ancient masterpieces, equipped to handle the threat of fire. They have miraculously developed tools to combat their most fierce enemy, and have stood the test of time to become one of the greats. 

This idea brought me here today. The idea of becoming one of the greats. But at the time, I did not see this. Instead, I saw the greatness, which is what holds over the expanse of the general rule of nature, that every creature is painfully mortal, every living thing, with exceptions that inspire awe. Of course Redwoods are still mortal, but they put off the shed of their mortal coil for as long as they can.

Awe inspired as I was, I quickly went to read again about these wonderful trees, towering atop jetting rocky cliffs, reaching into the atmosphere, and creating broad blockades to be circled by animals whose lucky stroke of conscience would make them think better than to destroy a wonder of nature. I learned then that the miracle of life for these old and wise trees was akin to that of the sea turtle, who like the Redwoods, barely are able to pass on their traits to new generations. A Redwood loses a cone less often than common trees and the tiny life inside is more often eaten than grows into a new life. The idea that old things live longer lives, that they have harder times procreating and different, if not extraordinary, means for protecting themselves intrigued me. I wonder who, what else has characteristics like these?

When the idea of living life beyond the natural order of things entered my mind, I was caught in my appeal to believe in what is said in the bible. I am newly decided that much of the mystery that is within those pages is true. I began to wonder about the lives of old, ones that lasted hundreds of years. 

The idea has entered my mind that these who lived long are not altogether exceptional, like remnants from a bygone era. As I set out to prove my case, I found that these stories are not atypical among various cultures. But that does not prove anything. 

And in setting off to investigate, searching a list on Wikipedia for the longest living organisms, I found that there are living things which have been brought back to life from amber encasements millions of years old. How is this possible? A most unbelievable feat!

The resurrection of life, thought impossible, is possible. There's one step in the direction of what can be. 

I also loved that the goo between our skin, which was discovered for the love of face products, (I like roller derming and hyaluronic acid is one of the best products for your face and found naturally in the skin), and the goo between the bark of trees, are reminiscent of each other. An allusion to the beginning of time and the primordial ooze which we all descend from, human, dog, fungus, tree.

I will be trying to find things to be wonderous about. Things that are like Redwoods and sea turtles. Also, the decision to call the witch hazel plant witch, and by the way, I can say I am one who disagrees with the one scholarly idea for my own, that they named them this for the branches used to find water in underground springs, and not because they have a tendency to pop out their seeds and throw them forth, is worth checking out. They are not at all like Redwoods.

*just found- As a plant, [pineapple] it’s strangely adapted to endure periods of drought.

It has been an idea then that old things that were of great beauty had been of a sort of obvious sign of divinity. Man's interest in cultivating could do away with this obvious touch of the divine (this is not necessarily true but interests me). The coming of the age of the Greeks was a time that knew of ancient beliefs as was at the time of the modernists and the ancients or the Rennaissance. 

* Idea from the "rare beauty" of pineapple.

I decided that the fruit of tropical isles are made sweet by heat.