diatoms

I was never as good at science as I was with writing or doodling, especially when it came to moles and equations and the more abstract forms that I could not see or touch, but I always liked biology and geology because I could at least see what was going on, and what was going on generally filled me with wonder and geeky love. Planets? Heck yeah. Plants doing that whole transpiration thing? Sweet! Growing crystals in the basement with sugar water, volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs? Bring it on.

Chemistry equations, physics problems, not so much, due in part to a mediocre education system and incompetent lab partners and a brain that skews creative rather than mathematical, but I'm eternally thankful for people who know how all that kind of thing works. My Saganista homies who worship at the altar of Degrasse Tyson (because even the most skeptical of us have saints and demi-gods, no?) might say I lose all love of Science with my Archaic Superstitions, these things are really damn cool and if anything it shows to me a kind of attention to detail and design that I find amazing from the unponderable epicness of galaxies and nebulae to the miniscule whirrings of the atom.

There were some cool pictures of diatoms in our textbooks, these little microscopic glassy looking snowflake-intricate organisms, kaleidoscopic filigree patterns glowing beneath the microscope, rearranged and photographed since Victorian times, somehow more beautiful than the algae encrusting the pond where I walked the dog. I love that they look like bits of stained glass, if there was jewelry that looked like this I would wear it.

I got re-acquainted with these things when I had cockroaches in my old apartment in the almost-hood and the vegetarians downstairs gave me a plastic container full of "bug cookies" made of diatomaceous earth, sugar, and flour, because benevolence to the animal kingdom did not extend to vermin with six legs. So yeah, they do what nukes can't do and they're so beautiful while doing it, not to mention working well in dynamite, filtration, and the garden. Good stuff.


Ernst Haeckel illustration, of course...

more photos of microscopic sweetness here...

what immortal hand or eye...

These nature illustrations are far more gorgeous than anything my brain could ever dream to conjure and the intricacy and practicality and the sheer exhuastive amount of species and interconnectedness that we humans somehow haven't completely destroyed only cements my childhood residual notions of Creator design genius that the majority of folk in my world would scoff at and tell me to move to Texas or something, but hey I'd prefer the company of William Blake to Dawkins & Co. any day.

Someday when I'm not hovering above the poverty line I'd love to have these kinds of things on the coffee table along with Harry Clarke and Fursy. In the meantime, there's the Internet, and it's for sharing such wonders and frequent fearful symmetry.

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

watch the weather change...

We stood in the empty corner office at the end of the hall, watching the birds fly backwards, the orange haze beneath the approaching darkness, the swirls of leaves and shreds of plastic bags and other detritus looping through the black hole air. The spires of the cathedral across the street are shadowed, smoky cirrus across the horizon beneath. I wish I had a camera so badly right now.

My dad and I used to watch the storms roll in from the garage. We had lawn chairs set up out there, we'd listen to classic rock on the radio and swig Coca-Cola out of a two liter bottle and he'd get a bag of chips or a pack of Twizzlers out of his car and we'd sit there and watch the wind blow up the street like we were at the movies, and we'd talk, but mostly we'd just be lost in the moment with a certain sense of awe.