Each cell of our body is home to what once was another organism.
A bacterium, perhaps, who wrapped itself in our tissues and said I can do things for you, if you do this for me. Our fabric was soaked in this agreement and now we harness quantum processes in every cell to turn food into the chemical fuel of our bodies.
Passed mother to child, mother to child, these cells within cells are transcribed and rebuilt in each generation of cell in each generation of us from their own blueprint. Membrane within membrane within membrane with maternal memory for eternity.
Seated along cristae, each protein holds a bowl of potent molecular broth, takes a small sip, and passes it to their neighbour. Sharing in calm combustion. This passing pacifies electrons, as waves they pass through energetic hills, and ushers protons into a different space so that their movement along gradients can be harnessed and we can exist as we do.
sharing in calm combustion
It is often said that mitochondria have lost their ability to live freely but without them we wouldn’t live at all, so then who are we without this covenant?
Not only is every cell of our being a home but every surface a metropolis of cosmopolitan microorganisms. I think, I am my thoughts, but with more connections from my gut to my brain than my brain to the rest of my body, which thoughts are mine and which are responses to the cues of my tenants? Does it matter?
Perhaps our main mistake is drawing such rigid boundaries around ourselves, around our matter. We breathe the exhales of trees and they take ours and use that stale air to make towering trunks, plaster themselves in bark, bloom with flowers and bud fruits which we swallow, and use to thicken our skin, to bend at the waist, to plant another harvest.
Where is the boundary when each of our cells holds the DNA of another and when each of our personalities holds the whisper of a million? When the placenta which allows mothers to nourish babies in the womb and bring new human life into being is a skill taught to us by a virus?
Constant evolutionary unfolding may have taken us through millennia of iterations, but can we accept organisms enfolding into each other is also a part of the process?
Slicing through time each finger of the bio blob may appear as a separate entity but these fingers sign out the language of life while connected at the wrist. A clandestine entwining of two pinkies may fuse to forge new trajectories.
Eyes closed and fingers crossed is how we make a wish.