2016-03-18


In the morning—early, still in the dark—I wake up and am an amoeba. Retract into sleep again until the alarm clock rings. Go through all the stages of development, every morning I crawl out of the ocean, up from the duvet, sprout legs for walking, unfurl fingers, raise myself upright, put on clothing, slowly become a more and more complex organism: I brush my teeth. All the while, the folds of my brain stretch out toward an increasingly powerful, increasingly piercing light: consciousness. It finally blinks on after five minutes sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. 
In the beginning was the water. The earth was without form and void, darkness hovered over the deep. Life formed in the water, and remained in the water. In the beginning was the water, and it won’t let us go. Each new life begins again in water. The fetus in its mother’s womb resembles the fetus in an egg. The fetus in an egg resembles the fetus in the sea. The egg white and amniotic fluid both imitate the primordial sea from which we arose. This imitation, this moveable sea, is a condition for life on land. And it required a certain degree of luck—the right mutation at just the right time. 

About this form and content stuff. Forms are not constant. An organism’s form, function, and appearance are not constant, the interaction between organisms is not constant. But its contents, the hidden secrets of the cell, its acids and chemical bases, those are constant. The contents of the secrets, the sequence of the codes, are not constant. The form of interactions is not constant. Yet the fact that interaction is perpetual, an infinite movement, that is constant.  

--from Every Morning I Crawl Out of the Ocean; Frøydis Sollid Simonsen (trans. Becky L. Crook)



[via asymptote]





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