by Philip Monte Verde
Picture yourself in a one seat submarine, with a lone beam shining out on the deepest ocean floor. It is 3.8 billion years ago and you, dear time traveller, are staring at a hydrothermal vent gushing out piping hot water. Miles of skull-crushing water above you an Earth you wouldn’t recognize is being peppered with meteorites and bursting with volcanoes. Neither above or below is a place to find love or hope or connection.
Absolute silence; the silence of the unliving.
Reach your right hand over and press the light green button on your submarine control panel. The one that places the magnifying lens atop your viewing window. Pivot your camera just to the upper left of the vent opening. Consistent lines of hydrogen sulfide wave blurrily past the screen. They’re dotted here and there by copper and zinc atoms.
Patiently hold your gaze on that spot and await your reward. There it is, suddenly in your vision: Life. After millennia of streaming out without result, the right combination of a dozen different chemicals connected in the right order and a cell was created. She is Eve, and she is the great, great, great times infinity grandmother of you and I. She is the matriarch of the trees in the forest and the fish in the sea. She is the mother of the disease and of the cure. Hello mama.
For a little while she just sits there, being present. In front of you is all of life. Everyone who has ever been and who will ever be were united and contained in a squishy little bit invisible to the naked eye. Everyone in Canada, in Cancun, in Calcutta, in your city and in mine. Every bone in every graveyard packed in like sardines. Packed in with every sardine. We were once one.
And then, tragically, Eve split in two. She begat Adam who begat Abel who begat Yasmin who begat Sophia who begat Joe, Todd, Tyler, Ahmed, and Nicole. For there was another rider in that cell alongside all of us. Hidden deep within that first string of DNA was an urge to keep going. That urge, the essence of life, decided early on that it had worked too hard to get here to exit the universe’s stage with the expiration of Eve’s flimsy body.
Earthly life has since gone out in an incalculable number of directions. It has risen out of the deep dark sea and crawled onto land, where it grips into the soil or pushes off into the air. Soon it will begin conquering other planets. It will go and it will go and it may never stop.
But an interesting thing happened not too long after the birth, life, and death of Eve. The cells had gone on splitting for many generations. They ventured further and further from the birth vent and banged against one another without thinking anything of it. Until one day a particular cell collided with another and instead of bouncing or bursting, they connected. This connection, two bodies becoming one, was as vital to our development as that moment when one body became two.
And it goes to illustrate a fundamental conflict in our hearts, our souls, our personal essences. As you sit there in your submarine, gazing at Eve, you surely can feel it. You have a deep, deep affinity for her, as you may for your own mother, your dog, your daughter, or the oak tree in your yard. You, we, desire connection. We go crazy without it. We will connect with a sexual partner in an urge to replicate that moment when we were united in Eve. But in doing so we make the same tragic mistake that pulled us so far away from original unity: we create a new life.
Picture yourself in a one seat submarine, with a lone beam shining out on the deepest ocean floor. It is 3.8 billion years ago and you, dear time traveller, are staring at a hydrothermal vent gushing out piping hot water. Miles of skull-crushing water above you an Earth you wouldn’t recognize is being peppered with meteorites and bursting with volcanoes. Neither above or below is a place to find love or hope or connection.
Absolute silence; the silence of the unliving.
Reach your right hand over and press the light green button on your submarine control panel. The one that places the magnifying lens atop your viewing window. Pivot your camera just to the upper left of the vent opening. Consistent lines of hydrogen sulfide wave blurrily past the screen. They’re dotted here and there by copper and zinc atoms.
Patiently hold your gaze on that spot and await your reward. There it is, suddenly in your vision: Life. After millennia of streaming out without result, the right combination of a dozen different chemicals connected in the right order and a cell was created. She is Eve, and she is the great, great, great times infinity grandmother of you and I. She is the matriarch of the trees in the forest and the fish in the sea. She is the mother of the disease and of the cure. Hello mama.
For a little while she just sits there, being present. In front of you is all of life. Everyone who has ever been and who will ever be were united and contained in a squishy little bit invisible to the naked eye. Everyone in Canada, in Cancun, in Calcutta, in your city and in mine. Every bone in every graveyard packed in like sardines. Packed in with every sardine. We were once one.
And then, tragically, Eve split in two. She begat Adam who begat Abel who begat Yasmin who begat Sophia who begat Joe, Todd, Tyler, Ahmed, and Nicole. For there was another rider in that cell alongside all of us. Hidden deep within that first string of DNA was an urge to keep going. That urge, the essence of life, decided early on that it had worked too hard to get here to exit the universe’s stage with the expiration of Eve’s flimsy body.
Earthly life has since gone out in an incalculable number of directions. It has risen out of the deep dark sea and crawled onto land, where it grips into the soil or pushes off into the air. Soon it will begin conquering other planets. It will go and it will go and it may never stop.
But an interesting thing happened not too long after the birth, life, and death of Eve. The cells had gone on splitting for many generations. They ventured further and further from the birth vent and banged against one another without thinking anything of it. Until one day a particular cell collided with another and instead of bouncing or bursting, they connected. This connection, two bodies becoming one, was as vital to our development as that moment when one body became two.
And it goes to illustrate a fundamental conflict in our hearts, our souls, our personal essences. As you sit there in your submarine, gazing at Eve, you surely can feel it. You have a deep, deep affinity for her, as you may for your own mother, your dog, your daughter, or the oak tree in your yard. You, we, desire connection. We go crazy without it. We will connect with a sexual partner in an urge to replicate that moment when we were united in Eve. But in doing so we make the same tragic mistake that pulled us so far away from original unity: we create a new life.
"Purple Grackle" by John James Audubon
