The Music of Life

Life is our existence as we know it. Existence is our reality as we experience it. Experience is our conscious perception of the environment that surrounds us. Our perception of this environment is brought to us through an organic platform made up of trillions of cells that somehow have figured out a way to function in concert. A concert that provides our conscious existence with this experience. Beginning at the union of 23 chromosomes to make that first unique cell [seems to take 46 chromosomes to get things working well], our existence and experience play their first note ... ah yes, the music of life.

Adam's Rib...sort of...

Expressing one's thoughts has been a goal of mankind for generations. Taking what is in the mind, and placing it as an image on things that will remain, seems to be an activity from the earliest times. From the first "doodle" [an aimless scribble, design, or sketch] to the "Mona Lisa" [a master piece], mankind has left such markings.

The sketch to the right is a tracing from one of the earliest human images. It is an engraving on a bone, thought to be a piece of reindeer bone. Some believe it to be an image of a man. The lines are certainly purposeful. A man...or a bird... or a... what do you think? The bone was found in a limestone cave [Pin Hole Cave], Derbyshire, England. It must have been one of those long winter nights with spare ribs for dinner. After eating, what does one do to pass the time. Let's take this little piece of flint and carve into this bone while it is still soft. Legs, arms, head... an eye... maybe could use a knife in hand... a little chunky maybe. Oh well, try again next time.

Wow, I thought... Adam's rib it is. The first to draw an image left to us...sort of.

The tracing is made from a picture shown:

Piggott S., Daniel G., A Picture Book of Ancient British Art, Cambridge, University Press, 1951. plate I.

Also shown in:

Hadingham, E. Secrets of The Ice Age, A Reappraisal of Prehistoric Man, Walker and Company, NY, 1979. p.226.

Pin Hole Cave is discussed in:

Dyer, J., Prehistoric England and Wales, Penguin Books, NY, 1981. p.99.

What would you have drawn?

A Gate to Nowhere

Gates open and close. They keep things in, or they keep things out. They often set boundaries which give definition to neighborhoods, or declare limits to traffic, public or private. Gates are all around us. They are built by man to imply that if you are on one side, you might want to get to the other. [All that green grass and stuff.]

The picture to the right shows a gate. It was taken after the destruction of a tornado that removed all boundaries. It was just about all that was left standing, blown open by the wind of an F-5 monster. An "act of God", some folks would call it.

Pretty useless this gate stands now. No boundaries, no landmarks, no anything that remains. A gate to nowhere I thought...have you experienced one?