On tube worms and trees . . .

Using only a little artistic license, one can describe all living things as being divided into two groups: those which are rooted to one spot on the Earth and those which are able to roam untethered. Plants and Animals-- some fuzziness around the edges of these distinctions, but a pretty good general concept. If you look way, way back to when life was young you will find what is perhaps a much more important distinction between the two and you will find what perhaps will be the downfall of our little branch of the Animal Kingdom. Somewhere, sometime (all Japanese folktales start out with mukashi mukashi aru tokoro ni— “long ago, long ago, in a place that was somewhere”) already way down the road of life, when such complexities as cells existed, certain gangs of cellular beings discovered that it was possible to incorporate other, slower cellular beings into one end of themselves, chemically break down their hydrocarbons into energy and waste, excrete the waste out the other end, and use the energy to move and capture still more slower cells. (Apologies to biologist friends for the over-simplification).

From there on, the chosen paths divided. One group of cells discovered photosynthesis and learned that roaming was unnecessary as long as there was a sun in the sky. The other group kept on developing the digestion model, adding chemical reaction to chemical reaction, ever increasing the efficiency of the extraction process until they had leveraged the amount of available energy to an amazing height, a bio-reactor in the stomach that would eventually allow for sharp-toothed predators able to run for days on a single serving of meat.

Take in at the mouth, push out through the anus. All animals, animated beings, 動物 (doubutsu—“moving things”) have a mouth and an anus. (Again, apologies to the bio-learned, anyway the exceptions prove the rule). Animals chew their way through the world powered by the distilled essence of their prey and drop the rest out the rear hatch. They don’t much care what happens to the excreta; luckily for them the rest of life has evolved to use cycles that incorporate the shit into new life and new food and new prey so the tigers and the chickadees just keep on eating and pooping and don’t have to think about it much. Yet these cycles depend completely on the non-moving beings to turn the waste of the moving beings into new food. Some planted beings occasionally have evolved to need certain moving beings in order to reproduce or spread seed, but the dependence is not nearly so universal.

Turn off your topological interpretation algorithm for a minute. Forget what you think you know about your physical shape and who/what you are. At one end is an opening that has taken in an enormous pile of potatoes, rhubarb, rare steak, and Gerber baby food. At the other end is the largest pile of poop you can imagine. In between is you, writhing through the universe, your senses attuned to the scent of the next potato, crawling away from your shit, singing your little tunes called Art, and wondering about the Meaning of Life. You are a tube worm.

Because we cannot directly use our dead for new life, animals are able to eat ourselves out of house and home. We are subject to Malthusian laws. We foul our nest, we use our acquisitive model of life to gobble up the universe, thinking ourselves secure in the promise of ever more universe to gobble. Plants on the other hand can grow upon themselves in ever increasing piles, deeper and deeper, burying layer on rich layer to provide energy for their future. Unless we learn some of the recycling philosophies of plants, learn to place ourselves within these cycles beneficially, we, the moving beings, are doomed. The worm can come to the end of the tube.