Life as Metaphor

 was thinking about this as soon as i woke up today... i had a memory pop into my head, of looking thru my microscope at madly wiggling chloroplasts in a leaf, from a plant of mine... the chloroplasts were visibly "lively", and swam around a multitude of cells -- i had to smile.... but then i was done looking at these moving little bits of the plant, took off the slide and brushed the slide (and the plant leaf) into the garbage.... i then did the same with the plant i had pulled the leaf from, because the plant itself was obviously "dead" in spite of all the moving organelles that still inhabited it...

i changed my behavior a bit later... i originally had done this because i assumed that every microorganism that was living within the plant was aerobic and would ergo suffocate now that the plant was no longer taking part in respiration --- but i late considered the "rights" of the anaerobic microbials that were dwelling in the plant-body, and would continue to live there, after the plant had been thrown away.... so i had then decided that i would throw the shredded-plants/plant-parts into a small bucket of dirt (my new garbage bin) and then onto the soil outside my building (after i was done in the lab)....

but it is tricky to label the chloroplasts (along with mitochondria) as actually alive when they are so tied to the cells/organisms in order to continue to exist... chloroplasts are completely dependent on the host-cell in order to reproduce and that is a clincher of earning the title of "alive".... so being wiggly and creation of its own food aside, the chloroplast can't make new chloroplasts, ergo, they are not alive...

however, in the case of the mitochondria, they can divide themselves (replicating) independent of the activity of the cell --- is the mitochondria alive? it is certainly more alive than the chloroplasts.... in either case, neither organelle can survive independent of the cells... 

the habit of the government, public media, and consumer products, don't seem to be at all interested in teaching the human population the truth about microorganisms.... instead they just tell them all that they want to, in order to get the humans to react in a way that is beneficial for the "speaker" : i.e. "this soap will kill viruses", "wearing this mask will block the viruses"[1], "this shot will kill the virus", etc....

the bottom line is that it is impossible to kill a virus, because a virus is not alive.

anyone who has taken Microbiology 101 could tell you that.

viruses do not create or seek their own food.... viruses do not reproduce or replicate themselves (they need the host to do this for them).... they are not made out of cells (more like DNA/RNA in a tiny corked bottle)... they can not stabilize their own body.... they do not ever grow or morph their "capsule" on their own: how they are built/born is how they were remain until coming into contact with a host.... 

speaking with a friend (who was a working virologist and had a PhD), he told me that it is closer to the truth to state that viruses can be *broken*, such as their capsid / surface of proteins / envelope being damaged and exposing the DNA/RNA to the elements (and making them unable to successfully invade a host).... 

ways to crack the evil-nut are with a human's/etc. immune system or mild radiation (i.e. ultra-violet light)...


it is so strange to think of a non-living organism causing us harm, but it makes sense when we think that many chemical compounds can do the same thing...

we should never forget that "life" is over valued at times as something which has "rights" over everything else... but do not forget that if you keep driving our focus deeper and deeper into an entity you come to realize that all living creatures are made (ruled) but innumerable non-living organelles/components --- we are the living, that is controlled by the non-living.

shalom! - Zora & co.

[1] the protection provided to the mask-wearer is questionable (it is safer to self-isolate, keep distant and have good hygiene); but it might be helpful to the other people that the mask-wearer comes near; by minimizing the water droplets in the mask-wearers breath, that carry many viruses, but the breathing holes of the masks are too large to stop the viruses themselves.

more than i realised:

Harlem Arts School Shuts Over Financial Problems


and i think i figured out why i'm freakin *so* bad... aside from the fact that its just right up there on my list of the Failures-of-Humanity that we make our kids suffer for what us grown-ups FUCK-up...

when i was little ms. sweet-n-innocent, and living my quasi-cracker existence in wetlands of coastal Jersey, i was basically growing up surrounded by families of Bennys** & commuters who just decided to relocate to NJ and STAY there... Brooklynese was me mother-tongue...

New York wasn't another "state" to me, i could see it from the beach (day OR night)... it was just like another part of Jersey, one that you'd have to take a CAR or ferry to get to, but of all the kids i knew, a lot of us had parents/grandparents from there (some of them STILL there)....

talk of the old-neighborhoods were like fairy tales from teh Old Country.... heard about where the best food was, which neighborhoods were the most dangerous (usually the ones the speaker was from!) and heard everyone throwing around addresses as intersections... and btw, i was super proud that i could say my mother was from "Hell's Kitchen" (first, because it would get some "oohs" sometimes, and also because it was the only time i could say aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks without getting in trouble)....

i wasn't the smartest kid with geography, i thought that the Coneheads were from France, and that was right in the middle of America near Wisconsin, but i also had other little Juju "truisms" in my head... Jews come from Brooklyn (ONLY Brooklyn)... you *have* to go to China Town to get cheap clothes... and Harlem is where JAZZ comes from! ;D like this Mecca of Soul in my head (and heart) and i am sure i dreamt up many not-at-all-accurate fantasies of what it would be like if i could live up there with all the music ;)

okay i know i was lacking a bit of info in most areas of life (i was a kid!)... i got over it as i grew up... most of it, anyway... now i know that Moses didn't part the East River and that my mother is apparently from "Clinton" (the FUCK??) but i can't give up my dreams of Harlem... i *can't* .. i feel like we owe Her & her children (and children's children!) so much!

so how the hell could New York let this happen?! it feels like such a horrible "omen" to see ...

- Z.

EDIT: address to their web-site: Harlem School of the Arts to find out more about the school and perhaps make a donation? (come on, don't make me whip out my Jewish-Mama guilt-trip on you now)



** re: "Bennys"... in case you don't know, a Benny is the kind of human that is predominantly very light-skinned, wears clip on sunglasss, has a shmear of white war-paint going down their nose, big BIG hats, wears shorts with waist-band pulled up to their nipples and (if male) is sure to wear black-socks with sandels. they live "away" and come "down to the Shore" to get sun (apparently they live underground?) and also buy cheap plastic trinkets on the Boardwalk, to bring home as souvenirs.

have to share a thought regarding Robertson's recent demonstration of idiocy.

it reminds me of when i was on a mailing-list for translators/interpreters when Katrina hit us down in LA....

i remember how i read post after post from folks discussing how Nola got what it had coming, and that it served them all right for being so stupid to live so far below sea-level (and so on).. and they laughed at how greedy Amrika was suffering now (note: it wasn't the "greedy" who were suffering)...

i remember replying to them all with 4-letter-words that would make HaSatan blush head to toe (not very smart of me, but i was in a panic), while i screamed at the computer monitor and plugged ears when yet another chopper flew over me & Aaron's apartment.... (sound of choppers makes me shake really *really* bad)

but it taught me a valuable lesson: humans are STUPID.

if we are not there first-hand to really experience things for ourselves, we tend to be a bit out-of-touch... the farther removed (by miles, or mentally "distancing"), the less we grok.

and among these wannabe-know-it-all polyglots of that mailing-list, with IQs that would make Einstein blush (from head to toe) i found very little sympathy.

so much for thinking that our "brains" will save this world.. i think it will be our "hearts".

- Jules & Co.

M. *finally* let me take his picture....





M. sez "garr."




- Z.