Recombinant Construction

[Norma photos]

Recombinant is a word denoting an organism, cell, or genetic material formed by recombination --a geneticist's word reserved for describing living things. I use it to describe my house and detect no conflict in definition. For the past month and a half my wife and I have been repairing, rewiring, rebuilding and painting our house after calculating it was, after many decades, composed mainly of spackle and caulk. House and I share the same birth year, 1949, and some years ago it was found that I too was mainly spackle and caulk and had to be gone over. I'm all better now but it's the house's turn.



When we moved here we were a young family needing space to air out the children. We found an old farmhouse with tumbled walls and rotten roof, so we got to work and made it livable. It was a great ambition, full of light and hope. By and by it more closely resembled a dark passage lit by guttering cressets. Still, a photon is a photon. Photons are quanta of light, tiny violations of matter-energy conservation laws because they have no lower energy limit. Strong ones poop out quick. Weak ones carry information from one end of the universe to the other. They are anomalies, like thought, which must also have no lower energy limit because we thought we could finish the house in a year or two.



Thirty years later, we're still at it. We ran out of money oftener than energy. We'd stop and scavenge, happy to fossick around in other peoples' rubble to find what we needed. Or we'd whittle and embellish what we'd already done. I include photos, some examples of those whittley times, preserved under Norma's fresh paint, to mark our ancient progress like light from distant stars.



Sometimes I look at a huge beam in the barn roof, an added room on the house, or concave route of an underground pipeline and wonder, how the heck did I do that? Oh I know I was younger and full of strength and ingenuity but still, how the heck did I do that? In recombinant inquiry one thinks and feels, designs better ways to do a better job. One prospects for materials, strength and solutions. The same question applies to the mineral prospector who learns geology, engineering and technology. Does he or she have more claim upon success than the merely lucky prospector who just digs a heel into earth and finds gold? Precisely! I don't know either.

Waiting

There is an ancient therapeutic art that predates Yoga, Tai Chi and certainly the medical philosophy of Galen. Its origin is shrouded in prehistory but is rediscovered by every generation. It may not even be a human invention because animals and insects practice it as a general thing. Even plants organize seasonal frenzies of it. It is called waiting.

Consider the specimen pictured above. In the background we can make out an orange extension cord where he has been running a saw. There is evidence also that he has been splitting logs with sledge and wedge. There is a battered yellow wheelbarrow with nothing in it. This means he's in the middle of a chore. Why is he sitting down? He is waiting.

Notice the traditional posture --gloves in hand, sitting forward, marginally alert expression. Notice also the official, all-weather waiting exercise machine he sits on, and over which he demonstrates such mastery. Obviously a skilled practitioner. He is waiting until he feels like going back to work. That could take a while, so let us examine the history of this discipline.

When we don't feel well, we get medicine. Medical science, as we know it, has advanced to quite a complicated thing, commensurate with the increasing complexity of disease. But there was a time when the only communicable distemper was fleas. The treatment was waiting, waiting until they went away or until one got used to them. And there was, we can be historically certain, even a time before that.

It was during that distant golden age the therapy was practiced and perfected for its own sake. One withdrew from the challenges of primordial life by sitting down and waiting until one's spouse came out taking snapshots and asking where the firewood is. Careful attention to this essay provides a reply of unimpeachable authority.

The therapy discussed here has existed longer and adapted itself more universally to modern medicine than any other. You will not find space devoted to later methods --aerobics, acupuncture, meditation, massage-- of spiritual and physical therapy in all medical establishments, but by golly you'll find a waiting room.

The Secret Symbolism Of Chimneys

When I checked my Cirlot (Diccionario De Simbolos Traditionales) for chimneys there was a conspicuous absence between Chimaera and Choice. This will not do. It is a problem. As usual, we must rely on our own resources, minds and memories to solve it. We can thumb through the book to related things, things that have chimneys, like ovens. Cirlot includes Athanor --the alchemists' oven-- but its chimney is really a combined distillery and refinery, therefore another sort of thing.

Yet, we can't entirely dismiss Athanor. The gross tar from its lower regions has much to do with the mind. However much of mind is machine, you can't gum it up with shoddy ideas and expect it to work properly. Joel Chandler Harris showed how selfish, contentious characters can imprison themselves by attacking tarballs. British Petroleum and the US government are currently demonstrating this principle on our Gulf Coast. Certainly, to settle for something less than optimal mental function, when truth is available, is morbid self-betrayal.

Let us examine regular chimneys. Santa Claus comes down them and leaves some gifts, unless I am naughty --in which case he leaves a lump of coal. Coal is fuel for further combustion, symbolizing Santy's hope that next year I shall have been good. The Ifrit, of "1001 Nights", is summoned by writing God's name in Hebrew, and, like Santy, implies judgement. Mostly, these Genies rise from lamp chimneys to trick us if we're too selfish with our wishes. So there's some danger involved.

The greatest danger has to do with wicked demons like succubi. The succubus is a pretty girl-demon who has sex with guys and steals their immortal souls. Although guys don't usually mind, the church frowns on it. In fact, it's churches that promulgated the superstition that chimneys, unlike doors and windows that close, are particularly vulnerable to evil. Gargoyles and scary sculpture at cathedral chimneys are intended as apotropaic magic to keep succubi and other moogies out. Complete absence of sexual temptation in the church is unimpeachable evidence that these wards have held.

Apotropaic --Greek for evil-averting-- magic needn't be architectural. The Nazar, or evil-eye, stone is common in Greece and Turkey, which brings us closer to the geographical origin of magical chimney infestations. Earliest written record being in Sumerian cuneiform dating back to 4000 B.C. I refer, of course, to the legend of De-dal Nita, "The Soot-Husband".

Unlike succubi, the Soot-Husband would come down the chimney into the dreams of unappreciated women, not to steal their souls but to praise them, massage them, and do for them in every kind and gentle way (Sum.:Gisdu-hili). There was, however, a judgement involved. At the end of these attentions, the Soot-Husband would curl up at the foot of the bed with the cheerful words, "Good-night, just kick me in the head if you need me!"

If the woman woke wanting more from the Soot-Husband and did indeed kick him in the head, she would be judged selfish and unworthy. The spirit would evacuate its base carbon body and the all the woman got was Salamu-sepu, or "sooty-footy". The story spread quickly through Sumeria and, because it reflected their shortcomings, men got upset about it. They created the story of Akhkaru, "Vampire", to defame Soot-Husband, but strangely, women sort of liked that one too.