Our mailbox at the street resembles a small wooden house, a look similar to our main house.
On the “chimney” of the mailbox house grows a small patch of lichen.
Do you like lichen the way I do?
Lichen falls onto our driveway almost everyday, attached to bits of tree — twig, branch, bark — that break away and follows gravity’s path onto the concrete surface.
One species of beard lichen in particular, but not this one.
As our climate gradually warms, lichen is migrating north, bringing symbiotic organisms along.
As with the variety of tree species in our yard, we have a multitude of lichen species.
Same with mushrooms, algae, bacteria, ants and other organisms I won’t encounter together on Mars.
What will migrate with us when we live off-Earth?
What will survive without us and adapt to new environmental conditions?
How many organisms on Earth didn’t originate on our planet?
I owe our next-door neighbours a copy of books on trees and edible wild plants so they can identify which plants not to kill in their yard to protect their curious one-year old child from eating less-than-nutritious green stuff.
I see the Trees book in front of me, under a pile of “French Idioms,” “Russian for Everyday,” “The New College French & English Dictionary,” “Peterson Field Guides to Stars and Planets,” “The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual,” “2004 Far Side Desk Calendar,” and “The Yale Book of Quotations;” on top of “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid,” “RE/SEARCH #8/9: J.G. Ballard,” “The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker,” and a spiral-bound copy of my book, “The Mind’s Aye,” not to forget issue #500 of MAD magazine.
Speaking of books, I have a few to finish reading, including “The Big Questions” by Steven Landsburg and a hyperreality book, “Travels in Hyperreality,” by Umberto Eco.
I wonder, which set of beliefs, particularly in the realm of religion, makes one more likely to approve of government/private industry spying? In Christianity, God is always watching, just like Santa Claus, ready to mete out rewards and punishment for our behaviours/thoughts.
Does our general culture encourage us to believe in seeking our fifteen minutes of fame, even if it’s only on a hidden security camera or set of IM chat logs?
Does lichen care about our meme-ridden upper brain functions or our labyrinthine specialty tasks and hobbies that spin out of a growing economy?
Likely not.
That’s why I like lichen — symbiosis that doesn’t require ritual or dogma.
Cultural scientists today argued their proof that silicon-based organisms such as computers are living beings.
I thank my living being for letting me write this blog entry on its plastic key skinned surface.
Enough meditative humour for the day — time to eat lunch and read a couple of books loaned by the public library.
