I’m a geek for microbes so I’m devouring this book. Here are some of Ed Yong’s delicious words.
“Through microbes we find unity with our fellow creatures, despite our incredibly different lives. None of those lives is lived in isolation; they always exist in a microbial context, and involve constant negotiations between species large and small… In fact, we are legion, each and every one of us. Always a ‘we’ and never a ‘me.’ Forget Orson Welles, and heed Walt Whitman: ‘I am large, I contain multitudes.’”
And here’s a poem I wrote a couple years ago. Geek. Geek.
Seeding Art
To map the microorganisms living in New York City's subway, researchers swabbed turnstiles, handrails, doors and poles and then classified each sample. They found genetic material from thousands of species, many unclassified. No two subway stations were exactly the same. “The bottom of a person’s shoe might represent the 'genetic history' of that person’s daily or weekly travels.” -- Cell Systems
Invisible germs of modern art
breed in each epidermal ridge
and valley of my palms,
each rubber groove of my oxblood
Doc Martens as I drift MOMA's
white labyrinth.
So when I lumber down
the subway’s concrete steps
blistered with old bubble gum,
I seed each silver-toothed turnstile,
each elbowed handrail,
with Van Gogh's skies
spangled with dandelion stars,
his fields furrowed
with cyprus.
I’m a gypsy grizzly bear
transporting a whole alpine
forest in my scat, my sweat.
Berries clumped
in the ruts of my soles
spurt their ruby ink.
No amount of soap
or paint can erase
the crimson tattoos.
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