DESTRUCTION OF HOME: Destruction is woven into the tapestry of the universe. Entropy, omeleteer of structured things, wields its indefatigable spatula. This is Entropy’s world we are living in – a world where things fly apart. This is a world where a toppled vase disintegrates into shards upon a polished floor, and where carnage cannot be made whole. A world where neither the King’s horses nor his men, can reconstitute that incautious ovum, Humpty Dumpty; a world where tender reverential hearts break, where young flesh bruises, where desire detumesces in the embers of fulfillment, where love itself withers on the vine, where old age trellises the skin, where bright hopes atomize, and where the mortuary awaits us all, sepulchral door swinging wide – candles lit, lambent and serene, within.
HOME IN BORN IN MOTION: Leaving home is a violent act, because walking is a violent act. Walking violates a stationary calm and announces, “this place does not satisfy my needs anymore”, or, “having served its purpose once, this place now bores me”. Walking derives, anciently, phylogenetically, from motile carnivory. It is rooted in impatience – the primordial impatience with waiting for morsels to waft on by. Motility is an ancestral condition. Life was born on the move. Flagellated, ciliated – gliding, and lashing – permanently unsatisfied and desirous. Motility is the characteristic act of animality. In their evolutionary procession, animals squirmed, wriggled, pulsated, swam, slithered, and later, lurched, crawled, leapt, hopped, flapped, flew, swarmed, brachiated, knuckle-shuffled and then most recently arose and walked away. Not the chosen option: repose is abandoned. A singular spot is forsaken. Beasts leave home to prowl and stalk, to kill and dine. Pursuing other options, bathed in the sunlight, were animals enduring cousins in the kingdom of plants. Left behind also: sessile brothers, animals hedging their bets by fiercely equipping with lures and tackle and macerating jaws.
Animals depart with teeth set in hungry mouths and they nibble on the world as they encounter it. The engulfing stoma of the ambulator, first and center of its anatomical toolkit, is nestled among the cranial sense organs. The arms and legs that flail behind are mere propellers towards the cosmic dining table. The frenetic peristalsis of the torso squeezes out the ejecta in our wake and makes room for new cargo. Most movement is ecology, and most ecology is trophic ecology. Ingestion is a fundamental act.