Contemplations

"Each organic or inorganic object on the earth makes, in the process of its growth, a delicate facsimile register of itself on the living sensitive ether that lies immediately around it and bathes and interprets its every action." - Balfour Stewart & P.G. Tait from The Unseen Universe, 1875.

It's strange how you can read something and at once it can seem like a newfound treasure, an immutable truth and something as familiar as an old comforting sweater. In a world of uncertainty and intolerable cruelty the idea of leaving a delicate imprint on the ether is somehow comforting. Every being, however small and insignificant is part of an ecosystem that promulgates the earth. Every life, however brief or prolonged began out of nothing, came into being and left a mark. A womb held every zygote, carried it until its violent escape into the world. Whatever happens after that may be horrifying, violent or amazingly gentle, but something was created out of nothing and that has to alter the universe in some way.