Sophia sighed like a sunset and asked, “So what percentage of our DNA do we share with velvet worms?”
“Again, I don’t know offhand, and I don’t really know if anyone’s actually sat down to figure that out.”
“Just estimate. Please. I beseech you.”
I had never been beseeched before, so I obliged her as best I could. “All I can say is that we’re genetically more similar than we are different. We’re made out of the same patterns. That’s what the biotech industry is built upon. You can successfully transfer genes between bacteria and mammals, and the genes remain functional.”
“All is one,” Blip suggested, an exaggerated mystical resonance coloring his voice.
“All is driven by genes.”
“But what exactly are genes?” another guest asked. She was a suburban dropout turned kabbalist theologian. She called herself Rabbi Rainbow. I think Blip and Sophia were trying to set us up, but neither of us took to the other.
“Some say the genetic level is the authentic level of reality, what’s actually occurring, and we’re just half-conscious vehicles for its expression and reproduction. Our life is driven by selfish genes.”
“But what drives the genes?” Sophia asked, like a child demanding a further why from every explanation.
“Nothing.” I shrugged. “They drive themselves. In an infinite amount of time, a molecule with the characteristic to copy itself only had to happen once, and reproduction as a characteristic of matter began, ultimately leading to life as we know it.”
“Hooey!” Sophia dismissed my explanation with an ireful scoff. It took me by surprise; up until that point she had been mercilessly chirpy, as prone to irritation as a bird is to singing off-key. “You give yourself too much credit. Just because you can reduce the causal sequence down to the actual material occurrences, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that’s all that’s occurring. That’s just how things are manifest in this particular plane of reality. You can trace a person’s depression down to an imbalance of electrochemicals in her brain, but that doesn’t mean you’ve found the cause. That’s only the process. An antidepressant only treats the symptoms of depression. More often than not, people get depressed for reasons larger than the chemicals in their heads. That’s like saying a headache is caused by a constriction of blood vessels in your brain. Headaches are caused by too much work or stress or fatigue or caffeine, not an aspirin deficiency. You’ve only explained the process of life, not the cause.”
I shrugged again and recited the motto of science. “You have to base knowledge on what you can reliably observe.”
Sophia shrugged back, smiling. “Maybe you’re not observing the right things.”
I had no immediate reply, and after a silent pause Blip redirected the discussion. “Tell me more about the similarities of genes.”
Grateful for his tact, I obliged. “Basically, we know that humans, chickens, fish, all look nearly the same at the embryonic stage of development. insects are like cousins, primates are our siblings. Chimpanzees even have a rudimentary culture. The major difference between humans and apes is the extent of our linguistic capacity.”
“So what does that make humans to each other?” Either Blip or Sophia asked this; it’s impossible to say for certain which.
Regardless, the other had the answer, and spoke it with flagon of wine raised. “We’re the same person! L’Chayim! To life!”
And we drank.
15 In fact, I felt compelled to point out that night, humans are not the same person, although we are very close. identical twins aside, any two people differ in about one DNA letter per thousand. it may not sound like much, but humans have over three billion DNA letters. This means there are three million places on the DNA double helix that differ from person to person. Additionally, new variation is constantly being introduced in the form of mutations, making our genetic structure a realm of infinite possibility. Thus, although we are variations on the same motif, any given individual is different from everyone else who has ever lived or will ever live.
“We’re like snowflakes,” Sophia chimed. “Each of us is unique, but it’s still pretty hard to tell us apart.”
16 There was great excitement later that evening as Sophia and Blip were serving some of their freshly baked bread, topped with cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil. I asked for mine to be toasted, and Sophia obliged me by cutting the large slice diagonally and placing each half in its own slot in the toaster.
“Fantastic!” Blip commented upon seeing her do this. “How did you come up with that?”
“I saw you do it this morning,” Sophia replied, somewhat confused.
Blip was dumbfounded. “You must have seen the toast cut diagonally after it came out of the toaster!” Blip turned to those assembled around the kitchen island and explained, his foot tapping away. “See, our homemade loaves come out taller than the grocery store bread the toaster is designed for. If we want to toast a slice of homemade bread, the top of it sticks out and doesn’t get toasted. But here, the solution is so simple. Cutting each slice of bread diagonally before putting it in the toaster results in a more perfect toasting, because only the narrow corner of the slice sticks out the top. An elegant solution, to be sure, but not mine. What my lover saw this morning was the toast cut in half, but she incorrectly assumed that it had been cut in half before it went into the toaster, which it wasn’t. Had she looked more closely, she might have noticed that it was not evenly toasted. But she didn’t do this, leading her to ‘imitate’ me.”
“Only it wasn’t imitation at all.” Sophia enthusiastically picked up on where Blip was headed and joined him in tapping. “I was still sleepy, and my incorrect assessment of reality revealed a solution, which I myself did not come up with. I thought I was only copying.”
“Right.” Blip nodded and turned to his guests. “Now, my question to you is,” he gravely pointed his wooden spoon at each of us, “where did that idea come from?”
17 Later, while drying the dishes with Blip, my unhandy hands flung a plate to the floor with a crash. I began to apologize but Blip instantly grabbed another plate off the counter and tossed it into the air, managing to say “No worries!” before it shattered on the tiles as well. “See,” said Blip, holding two more plates before me. “None of our plates match anyway. Sophia’s parents got us a complete twelve-place dinner setting, but we sold it back and hunted through thrift stores, yard sales, and antique shops for single pieces, most of which cost around twenty-five cents. Now we have a couple dozen beautiful dishes, and as many bowls and goblets. And we still treasure hunt, so the variety is in constant flux.” He kicked a shard that was in front of him. “I like to think that we rescue random molds of mass-produced suburban uniformity and turn them into a motley hodgepodge of proud and individual works of art.”
“But you just threw one on the floor.”
“So did you.”
“So what kind of a rescue is that?”
“It was a blaze of glory!” He gestured to the floor. “Look at it. What an explosion! All that potential energy contained in the plate, held in the molecular structure of the ceramic, escaping in one smashing instant. The plate was only the shell for a spirit, a spirit who stepped apart from the rest and reveled in its individual beauty. it’s escaped, see? ultimate release only comes to those who achieve their potential. It was ready.” He stepped on a shard and ground it into further smithereens. “It was a good death.”
“But you just killed it.”
“Flake,” he smirked, drying a goblet. “What are you talking about? It was just a plate.”
18 “Which do you like better?” Sophia once asked me as she sat in her rocking chair knitting with the joy of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. “The tingling, needles-and-pins sensation when your foot falls asleep, or the dizzy, seeing-stars feeling when you get up too fast?”
“I don’t much care for either, actually,” I responded. “Besides, they’re really both the same thing. Your foot
tingles because it’s not getting enough oxygen, and you get dizzy because your head’s not getting enough oxygen.”
“Good.” She gave her chair an emphatic rock. “Now I don’t have to choose between them.”
19 The union of Blip and Sophia is far greater than the sum of its parts. Singly, they are mere sounds, notes with no purpose. Together, they harmonize like a chord never before struck, dancing to a tune only they can hear, living in a world only they can see. They are a providential pair, a dyad reunited, and the happiest couple I’ve ever met. Strangers are forever commenting that they look like twins, a dually flattering pronouncement, for each is tremendously delighted at being likened to the other.
Sophia and Blip had already been dancing together for five years when I first met them ten years ago, but they got married (or merried, as they insisted) only eight years ago. They made certain, however, that their wedding guests understood that they were not about to start counting their anniversaries all over again.
It wasn’t a legal ceremony anyway. In fact, they promoted it as an outlaw wedding. And indeed, it was a blatant disregard for normalcy. No one presided over the ritual but themselves, and it was held deep inside a gorge at a state park where such activities were not permitted. They took great delight in this fact and played with it from the start, sending out parchment invitations sealed inside bottles, daring their guests to attend this bandito matrimonial, to applaud them as they sought treasure in one another. Flamboyant costumes were required.
When the day of the wedding arrived, and they had dressed those who hadn’t taken them seriously about costumes (myself included), they divided their guests into five groups of six. They gave each group a separate treasure map, five different paths leading to the same secret rendezvous. Then they disappeared, by which I mean they somehow ducked out of the picnic area while everyone else stood around looking ridiculous and trying to meet up with the others in their group. There was some grumbling but much amiability, for Blip and Sophia had succeeded in turning us into an unlikely gaggle of gypsies and jesters and monks and pirates. Since even the grumblers weren’t about to skip out on a wedding, there was nothing to do but follow our directions.
I was an elf. Blip gave me some green tights and a tunic, then popped elfin tips on my ears and painted my face, “emphasizing your laugh lines,” he said. “You don’t laugh enough. I’ll bet you get cramps in your cheeks when you laugh too hard. That means that you’re not laughing enough. Your face should cramp up when you frown, not when you smile. When you smile, the corners of your mouth point the way to heaven.” He stepped back and admired his work. “Did you know that all of your laugh lines ultimately emanate from a single point on your face?” He touched his green eyeliner pencil to a central point on my forehead. “That point is your third eye.”
20 Blip, of Italian and Irish ancestry, likes to call himself a Hindu, though he practices almost nothing of the religion, condemns the caste system as a justification for inequality, and chides karma as a charming but silly concept. He is, however, very enthusiastic about imbibing bhang to celebrate Shiva’s birthday. He claims that this prevents the quick-tempered deity (who really only symbolizes an aspect of our own collective consciousness, he never neglects to add) from growing irritated and destroying the entire world with his third eye. When is Shiva’s birthday? I do not know, but I am quite certain that it is not as frequent as Blip seems to celebrate it. As for Sophia, she’s half Huichol Indian and half Russian Jewish, with a touch of Romany buried somewhere. She practices as much Judaism as Blip does Hinduism. On some Saturdays, she studies the tarot deck with Rabbi Rainbow.
When they had a child a couple of years after the wedding, I couldn’t help but ask what religion that made their daughter, since descent is matrilineal in Judaism and patrilineal in Hinduism.
They only shrugged the question off, as if it were as obvious as the purpose of existence itself. “She’s a Hinjew,” they spoke in unison.
21 Blip and Sophia are not averse to their Catholic and Native American spiritual influences either. Along with Christmas and Hanukkah, which they celebrate on winter solstice with some local pagans they’ve befriended, they fast on High Holy Days and were never hesitant to engage in peyote and other such ceremonies in their youth.
Mostly they practice good cheer, which, they maintain, is the obvious purpose of existence.
22 Blip and Sophia imitate the innocence of their daughter, whom they adore. They named her Dandelion, though her eternally astonished eyes are more like black-eyed Susans caught in the headlights of heaven. Her nickname is Dandy, and she is the benevolent and undisputed head of their household. If ever she has a question, all else ceases until it is answered to her satisfaction, at which point she does a little dance halfway between a skip and a jumping jack and scampers into the next room.
When she was very young, she would sometimes wander over and join any company Blip and Sophia might have been entertaining. She would listen intently to the talking, and after a while attempt to participate. Thus our conversation was often reduced to “yabble wuzzel fossy kline,” or some such piffle, no matter how serious the issue at hand. At first this was quite innocent, but after a while it seemed to take on something of a mocking tone. She would dance around us, imitating the motion of our flapjaws with her hands, prattling and chanting nonsense. Or perhaps I project my own insecurities.
Dandy never uttered an intelligible word except for gardyloo until her third birthday, at which point she commenced speaking with nearly perfect pronunciation and syntax, singing “Happy Birthday to You” along with everyone. Prior to that, Blip and Sophia thought their daughter might have aphasia, a psychological disorder in which the affected person cannot use speech, cannot connect words and ideas. They were not particularly concerned about this possibility, reasoning that it would keep them honest, since you cannot lie to someone who doesn’t understand language. “She perceives your actual emotional presence, not what you claim it to be,” they cautioned. “So no b.s.”
When she finally did speak, it was a considerable relief to the rest of the adults who interacted with her, though not because anyone was concerned about her cognitive development. She was clearly advanced in that regard. Rather, we were relieved that she simultaneously relaxed her somewhat unsettling habit of listening attentively to whatever an adult might be saying, and then invariably answering “Gardyloo!” while pointing and giggling. She had a disarming ability to make one feel utterly foolish with this pronouncement.
Sophia explained that she was partially to blame for this, as she was the one who taught her the word. It was, as I’ve said, Dandy’s first “real” word, and the only one she used until she was three. Gardyloo, Sophia explained, was an expression common in some towns of medieval Europe. It was hollered out one’s window just before heaving one’s pail of piss or bucket of shit into the street below, for that was the extent of indoor plumbing in those days.
“That was Dandy’s first word?” I asked.
“She learned it when she was being potty-trained. I always said it when we flushed the toilet.”
“But we think she extended the meaning to when she thinks we’re full of crap,” Blip added, lifting Dandy onto his shoulders.
“Hardly complimentary.”
Sophia shrugged. “That plumbing detail is often missed in historians’ accounts of the plagues that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages. They were wading through their own sewage, and blaming their sickness on witchcraft. Anyone who tried to reason otherwise was burned at the stake for heresy.”
“You say that like they were a bunch of shitwits and we’re so much more advanced,” Blip challenged her. “We have toilets that flush now. So what? We still eat, drink, and breathe our own pollution and wonder why we get cancer.”
“Actually,” I couldn’t resist debating, “some of the most current research is suggesting that genetics plays a large role in causing cancer. It’s often very difficult to demonstrate environmental influ
ences.”
“What does it matter if there are genetic factors?” Sophia dismissed my comment. “Those are only predispositions that would decrease as the environment became more pristine. And what’s the point of that line of research anyway? Are we trying to alter our genes so we’ll be able to live in our own shit without getting sick?”
I fell silent, Blip laughed, and Dandy answered for everyone. “Gardyloo.”
23 While I am on the topic of excrement, it’s worth mentioning that Blip and Sophia were quite fond of their own. They went so far as to save it, compost it, and fertilize their organic garden with the fruits of their rectums. Their commode was a composting toilet. I, however, was forbidden from contributing to their fecal fund. They had a second toilet connected to a septic tank for guests such as me.
“It’s an organic garden,” Blip explained gently to me one afternoon in their kitchen. “And I’ve seen the food you eat. We only eat pure, organic foods. Humans are at the top of the food chain, and the toxins we dump in our rivers and spray on our plants and inject into our animals eventually work their way back to us in the food we eat. That’s why our fertilizer has to be organic. otherwise we’d be cycling the toxins through ourselves. I hate to tell you, but human shit is the most toxic shit of any species in the world.”
“Our poop doesn’t stink,” Sophia quipped. “Which is not to say that we think we’re something special.”
“We’re not hot shit,” Blip added.
“And we’re not full of shit either,” Sophia continued. “You can take that figuratively or literally. I poop three times a day. Gardyloo hooray!”
Just a Couple of Days Page 5
