Alone Again, Naturally...

      My wife returned to her childhood home in Cornwall, a place we typically returned to each year together.  But things came up with the dog and alas, it was decided that I should remain at the house to ensure there were no hiccups (our dog, because of his legs, can no longer be boarded, and it's been difficult to find a sitter willing to take on a protective and partially disabled 93-lb. German Shepherd).  But shed no tears for me since a few weeks alone often finds me doing things I normally wouldn't do...watching a few Pixar or kung fu movies (the animated feature UP proved especially timely for me as it showed the passage of time and one suddenly becoming alone in later life), power-washing a few outdoor items, eating some of the foods my wife doesn't really care for, all enjoyable pursuits, at least until the loneliness kicks in (my wife, back in her coastal home of tidal beaches and cheery pubs, will undoubtedly be feeling the same at a later point).  But I'm slowly adapting to picking up the slack; as my mom used to tell me when her husband of 40+ years (my stepdad) passed away and she was suddenly doing everything on her own, "until they're gone, you don't realize just how much they did."  So yes, the house is nowhere near as spick-and-span as when my wife is here, but I can blame a lot of that on being a male.     

     But I digress because the arrival of summer is just ahead which means yard work, re-staining the deck, semi-trying to keep up with the neighborhood's immaculate lawns (although being the bane of the neighborhood has never bothered us) and such, all the things that fill those home magazines with guilt-inducing photos of "perfect" patios and front yards.  But then, age enters the picture and for me at least, one comes to recognize that there are simply things you can (or should) no longer do (such as get on the roof).  Simple things now take much longer, and that motto of measure twice, cut once, has turned into try, try again (I am not a contractor, and my "projects" often validate that).  These days, maintenance (which used to be fun and a minor sort of pride) has become, well, maintenance.  But you know that phrase "when the cats away the mice will play?"  Another part of being older is that when given the chance, there's not much desire to "play."  In younger years, when you lived in your parent's  house and they left you in charge for a weekend, you had a wild party, aka Risky Business (this happens a lot in the movies but never in real life, or not in mine at least), or your spouse has to head out for a weekend business trip and you head out for a night out, aka Something Wild (movies again). But when older, alone time becomes a mixed bag: you should do those things you promised yourself (clear the desk, clean the garage, read those books, etc.) or that you promised her (clean the house/fridge/toilets, all those manly things that you somehow thought just happened on their own).  And yes, some of that will happen (buy roses for her return...must jot that down).  But the odd part for me is that all those movies I "wanted" to watch, or concerts I wanted to play again, suddenly had little or no interest.  Instead, it became a chance for me to bounce around, to read something one night then watch a video clip on another, everything so random and next to nothing from my "list."  

Ocean oil spills as of 15 years ago: Oceana

     The book Phenomena described it well: ...even though I'm a scientist, I must admit I've discovered things I didn't know (or at least didn't know well)...Rhizomes have no center.  They are polymorphism underground stems with no beginning or end that grow in all directions, with no hierarchy.  This book follows the same principle, finding the same sense of wonder in a snail shell as in the formation of a star.  And from there it begins: the difference of a meteor and a meteoroid (which differs from a meteorite); the countries with the largest forest megafires (who knew Portugal was #5), the Chinese opium wars of 1839 & 1856 when China did not want Britain bringing opium into their country (China lost both wars and the Golden Triangle --Britain/India/China-- of opioid addiction began); and that sand is the 3rd most used resource on Earth (after air and water); ad in proxemics and trophic networks, brumation & estivation (what?).  And on and on.  I tend to enjoy that sort of thing, not so much the trivia but the learning.  Smithsonian offers similar info bits at the back of each issue, such as why the original Constitution didn't require all 13 colonies' signatures (Alexander Hamilton was probably the most vocal opponent); and how the Sputnik satellite was part of a 67-country competition (the US successfully launched its Vanguard satellite 6 months after Sputnik; the US satellite is still in orbit)..  Now having some time alone meant time for me to contemplate and to reflect on more than a few things, even if I didn't understand it all.  Much as with the scientist saying in the book, The older I got the less I seemed to understand.  I can only fall back and enjoy the creativity of how the human mind (and not AI) pieced together Fred Astaire and other old-time movie dancers to uptown funk (that said, Open AI now has nearly 1/2 billion users each week, reported The Atlantic).

      I am far from the person of my youth, now at the point where a few friends struggle to keep their memories or see their cancers return.  But I also feel that I am here in the middle of a road, not looking at the fading past or looking at the distant future, but here, just here.  As author Sarah Kendzior put it: It is a strange thing to wander the faulty memory of a faded dream, but that is what it feels like to drive Route 66.  The road is lined with rotting monuments and broken into detours -- but what is still there is so revealing, you hope it remains.  You need it to stay because America likes to pave over its lies, and you want proof of what happened.  To show your children the roots of the fables spun to cover the damage done, to see that alongside the huckster totems there are relics of sincere belief -- from people who had faith in America whether they should have or not.  If Route 66 in the twentieth century was the American Dream, Route 66 in the twenty-first is the American Reality.  One century into its existence, it has become an honest road.  It is full of bombast and tragedy, but it's sin and joys have been laid plain.  You can't be a mean liar in a place that is equal parts bravado and ruin.  You can only be a funny one or a sad one, desperate for a friend.  Route 66 invites you to join in, to leave your mark, to be a fellow traveler.  It is a strange thing in America to feel wanted like that...Route 66 is America, and America is falling apart.  Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the completion of Route 66.

Dead zones of today's oceans: Source: Phenomena

     Admittedly, I am also broken; and agree with Kendzior that America may be broken, politically maybe, but then we've been through all of this before.  Picture these words: ...to produce the intellectual perplexity, the emotional disorder, the doubt of truth, the distrust of all declarations of principle, all measures of value, all standards of decency, in the midst of which, like thieves in the confusion of a manufactured panic, the gangsters of the age may have their way.  Would you guess that those words are the manifesto of Project 2025, or the strategy playbook under Trump?  Actually the words came from Hitler's "project."  Hegemons, those countries or regions that "lead" the world, on average last about 75 years, although sometimes larger dominance stretches over a couple of centuries...the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese emperors, the ships of Portugal & Spain, the British, and perhaps, as the United States passes its own 200-year mark, it may now be our time.  And while we may seemingly be on the verge of passing the torch, there is something more than humanity's history of nations squabbling over control.  Step back, way back, and see the world we're in.  The world seems broken.  Those oil spills of 15 years ago (see picture), those oxygen & nutrient dead portions of the today's oceans (see other picture), those worldwide microplastics already in the polar caps (although scientists are quite excited about the massive mountain range --as larger or larger than the Alps--  buried under the eastern side of Antarctica's ice, which gives you an idea of just how much frozen water is there), the contaminants reaching our aquifers.  It can be so depressing and overwhelming.  How can we have "killed" so much of the ocean, the main giver of what we breathe and what we eat?  How can we keep destroying our other "lungs," the Amazon, which (as two botanists told Science Friday) has more species of plants in 100 square meters than does all of Europe.  As songwriter Carole King wrote: ...watch the passers-by: mirrored in their faces I see frustration growing and they don't see it showing.  Why do I?  Editor Jennifer Sahn of High Country News wrote: We cannot let hate eat away at our hearts.  We cannot let it consume us.  We must protect that part of us that loves fiercely from the part that aches at the tidal wave of injustice sweeping outward from the nation's capital...Yet finding joy is still possible and, I would argue, essential.

Global initiative ad from Arizona State University

     So I pleasantly slipped back into my random world and watched How Big Is the Universe, wondering how the universe could be so large and yet still be expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light?  Seeing our home planet get smaller and smaller, then our solar system and entire galaxy become so small that even they are no longer visible, then to watch it all disappear into the "local" group and then have even that fade into a mere dot of the Virgo cluster, and then to have that disappear into the Laniakea cluster (and perhaps even more mind-boggling, that is just the tiniest portion of what we can "observe").  Watching all of that however, has quite the opposite of making me feel insignificant.  Rather it makes me feel all the more fortunate.  An article in Scientific American went the other direction and discovered that there was much more to our cells, those blobs of red and white that doctors monitor in our blood work.  And blob is how the article put it about "biomolecular condensates:" These little blobs inside living cells now appear to feature across all domains of the living world and are “connected to just about every aspect of cellular function,” says biophysical engineer Cliff Bran­gwynne, who was part of the 2009 Dresden team and now runs his own lab at Princeton University.  They protect cells from dangerously high or low temperatures; they repair DNA damage; they control the way DNA gets turned into crucial proteins. And when they go bad, they may trigger diseases.  Biomolecular condensates now seem to be a key part of how life gets its countless molecular components to coordinate and cooperate, to form committees that make the group decisions on which our very existence depends.  “The ultimate problem in cell biology is not how a few puzzle pieces fit together,” Brang­wynne says, “but how collections of billions of them give rise to emergent, dynamic structures on larger scales.”  Step back and you could almost say that about ants, or bacteria...or humans.  As author David Kessler wrote in his book Visions, Trips, & Crowded Rooms: The saying goes, "We come into this world alone, and we leave alone."  We've been brought up to believe that dying is a lonely, solitary event.  But what if everything we know isn't true?  What if the long road that you thought you'll eventually have to walk alone has unseen companions?  What if who and what you see before you die changes everything?...as Mother Theresa told the author, "death is part of the achievement of life."

     So spring gives way to summer and with it comes all those reminders that another year is well underway, and that somehow all of us are also a year older.  And when you suddenly realize that you are now under that category of being "older," each year becomes a bigger and bigger reminder of that.  The time to do the maintenance and to clear a few weeds before the heat of summer reminded me of a piece in Bloomberg on vitamin D (stay with me here).  Said part of the article: “It’s actually a very complex story,” says David Leffell, a professor of dermatology and surgery at Yale University’s medical school.  "It all starts with the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, the same kind that gives you sunburns.  When sunlight hits your skin, it breaks some of the bonds in a common molecule in your skin to form a compound called previtamin D3, which is then converted into vitamin D3 by the heat in your skin. (That D3 is the same type of vitamin D found in salmon and fortified orange juice.)  Vitamin D3 travels to the liver and kidneys, where it’s transformed into the chemical the body needs.  Many people know vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium and maintain strong, healthy bones.  But it also helps other parts of the body, including the prostate and digestive system."  In a sense, Leffell says, it’s less like a vitamin and more like a hormone that has wide-ranging effects on a variety of organs...And more time in the sun won’t provide unlimited vitamin D. "At some point," Leffell says, "the body maxes out on how much previtamin D3 it will produce."  You need to go outdoors to have a healthy life; don’t crawl under a rock...Leffell adds: “Everything in moderation."

    Ironically, moderation doesn't seem to be a common trait in today's world.  Maximize your time, multi-task, gorge yourself at buffets and cruises, try to read and watch everything, never let go of your phone.  For Cornwall, the mackerel has become a good preview of just how close we as humans may be to a precipice, wrote Hakai (now bioGraphic): ...scientists say mackerel are undeniably on the decline; a 2021 assessment by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) found that spawning-age stock was at the lowest level ever recorded, prompting a flurry of management measures, from a 50 percent reduction in quota for commercial harvesters to a catch limit on the recreational fishery—a first for a fishery that once had no maximum catch.  For some, these changes have been hard to accept, not least because the behavior of mackerel belies their downward trajectory; as their numbers shrink, they cluster together more, creating the impression that the fish are as plentiful as ever.  But the bigger adjustment may be cultural, in a region where mackerel’s abundance is woven into the fabric of everyday life, from a summertime ritual shared within families and a food distributed to elders in Indigenous communities to a source of bait for fishers supplying their own lobster and crab traps, not to mention the basis of a commercial fishery spread across the four Atlantic provinces and Quebec.  Now, as mackerel populations dwindle, a fish once taken for granted has stepped into a complicated spotlight, with people wondering if their decline can be reversed, or if—as once-abundant species like the Atlantic cod have done before them—mackerel will slip away for good.

    So the title above comes from the song by Gilbert O'Sullivan whose upbeat melody belies the loneliness of the lyrics: My mother, God rest her soul, couldn't understand why the only man she had ever loved had been taken.  Leaving her to start with a heart so badly broken, despite encouragement from me no words were ever spoken.  My wife is scheduled back soon, recharged by the Cornish coast, a land of "ancient" night skies filled with childhood memories now partially buried by tourists and buildings.  We all come and go on this planet, often without realizing that life is still so full of discoveries, not only in deep space, not only within our deep tissues and cells, not only within our perceived world/s, but within our views of what we see...or wish to see.  All the time in the world is really so little time (a good example of this is the award-winning Scale of Time).  So the continuation of Carole King's song seemed to fit my temporary "alone again" world in a much better fashion: You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart.  Then people gonna treat you better; you're gonna find, yes you will.  That you're beautiful as you feel.