Saturday 7 October 2000

Pic of the day: The summer leaves.

Fall of the nuts

I was on my way to the local grocer's again, as is good and proper on a Saturday. (Well, for us gentiles at least.) As I was venturing along the path into the forest, half lost in thought, I heard a sharp KNACK not unlike an airgun, and then something hit the ground just beside me. I was immediately alert, looking all around me. But there was no one in sight, nor anything special. And then I heard it again, further off in the forest. And again and again, an ever increasing number of small sharp clicks, and the sound of small things falling. Eventually it dawned on me what was happening: It was raining nuts.

And not content with that, the trees started to shed their leaves. For weeks now, we have been able to see the occasional leaf come tumbling down; this was not like it. They fell in droves, like unbearably tired flocks of birds settling through the branches and twigs toward the ground and a resting place. It was snowing enormous brown snowflakes, dry and brittle. To me it seemed as if the forest had seen me and suddenly remembered: It was autumn, and high time to do something about it. Certainly it illustrated why the Americans call this season "fall".

The explanation was of course more prosaic. In the forest I could feel no wind, but as I came into the river valley I felt it blowing gradually stronger. There must have been a long time of calm followed by a stirring of wind, that sent the heavy acorns and hazelnuts tumbling first, then the leaves as the wind picked up, in the upper branches.

***

Life is like this too, isn't it? Nothing happens, even though it is overdue, until the winds of change start blowing. It's that way with entire nations, as in Serbia this week. And it is that way with individual people. As long as the calm reigns, the change is slow and gradual, until it is overripe. And then suddenly, there happens what had to happen.

I am not sure if this bodes well or ill.

***

This week, my body has been stiff and tired. At first I blamed the long walk I took last weekend, which was a bit more than I am used to anymore. But then I noticed that it did not only affect those muscles used for such a walk. Most notably, small muscles generally associated with the male reproductive system. Yeah, I know I don't keep those in top shape exactly; but now I felt like I'd been through a two-day orgy. (No, I don't speak from experience here ... I'm just extrapolating from much smaller values.) A very strange feeling, and unaccounted for.

Right now, I think that the general stiffness and weariness comes from lack of sleep. For more than a week, I have slept less than I would like to, because once again my throat and bronchies clog up while I sleep. I've been running on stress hormones the last few days. Whenever I tried to relax, I fell asleep, even when playing The Sims. Tonight, I slept around eight hours, though not all at once. That sure felt good.

***

Speaking of sinusitis and such, and with the risk of being a bit gross: I really appreciate the way the mammal windpipe stops by the mouth on its way down from the nose. Thanks to this, I can cough up the excess mucus that carries away bacteria and dust from my nose and the nearby air passages. It is not a pretty sight, but it beats having this stuff gather in my lungs.

Imagine how ticked off I was, then, to read The Science of Discworld and find the crossover between the food and air passages mentioned as an example of inferior design, a proof that evolution is just a haphazard process that carries on bad traits as long as they don't kill us off. What gives? These people never had a sinus infection? Or are they just nuts?

When I was a child, it was not uncommon to remove the tonsils of small children even if there were no problems with them, just in case. The idea was that the tonsils, like the appendix, were just leftovers from our animal past and had no function in modern humans. Today we know that both tonsils and appendix are part of the immune system. While they pose some danger, they also offer benefits to the large majority who don't get a serious infection there.

Whether you belive in God, the Goddess, Evolution or the Great Turtle, you should be able to look at yourself and all of nature and be in awe. Now and again through the millenia, someone has stopped up and wondered how the mighty oak could fit in a tiny acorn. Today we know, but we find that it is far more impressive than it looked to the ancients. Not only is the tree in that tiny nut: It is rolled up in the center of one itty bitty invisible little cell somewhere in there; and it does not even look like a tree at all.

Life is strange, awesome, endlessly fascinating. I wish it would never end.