Original Soup Of Life Poem by Denis Mair

Original Soup Of Life

Rating: 4.8


Tell me, how can six feet of DNA get wound up inside a nucleus that is measured in microns?

How can so much thread get unspooled without tangling? And how does it get wound up again like a hawser?

How does DNA in a chromosome get so packed into coils and supercoils that it becomes like a big biocrystal?

When the cell needs a certain segment of coding, how does the double helix unzip to the right place?

Before the cell divides, the DNA must be copied. How can the helix possibly unwind at 100 rpm during the duplication?

When the cell is ready to divide, what are those filaments that pull the chromosomes toward the middle and line them up in pairs?

How can the paired chromosomes engage in spontaneous slice-and-exchange between corresponding segments? This shuffles the deck and breaks up gene clusters that might behave toxicly toward their analogues.

Don't believe the common saying that "DNA is an intelligent molecule, " or that it has higher information density than any other matter.

DNA is a totally passive medium for code; it is just a layabout stretched out in the nucleus of a cell!

But there is a matrix that sustains all cellular structures; it breaks them down as needed on the way to other stages.

Behind the rigid fact there is a dance which is never confined to this moment.

The lineup of nucleotides only makes sense in a whirlpool of chain reactions. The template needs an enzyme cascade to make a protein.

There is a matrix, at once MATER and MAGISTER, capable of reading DNA, transcribing DNA, and utilizing DNA.

In a prearranged reaction sequence she releases droplets of lactic acid at just the right places,

So contractile fibers will tighten and march chromosomes into paired formation.

And this ability to pull with actin fibers is an invention which is writ large in a muscle cell.

All this is performed by protoplasm, in a state which is basically fluid,

So the fluidity of this matrix is more complex than fixed coding could ever be.

The breadth of its complexity lies in its feedback cycles interlocking in all directions out to the horizons of its possibility space;

The depth of its complexity is the irreversible direction of its energy-state conversions going down through time.

The living soup has tiers of relationality on which the segments of structural coding depend;

Only living, liquid stuff knows the nesting levels by which code can be applied to code.

Here in the world of human concerns, we also feel that purely abstract information is of little use.

A library is not intelligent; only scholars who read books are intelligent.

Scholars who read books are not intelligent; only someone who sends others spinning in circles is intelligent,

For instance, people who wield power: they don't set much store by pure information.

And what about a woman? Her way of sending a person spinning seems to come from far away,

And she herself may be mystified.


Here in the human world we have another kind of person: on one hand he likes to dig out a little pure information;

On the other hand, he likes to send people spinning in circles, but as for which of these he will choose,

His mental workings are often in a fluid state.

He's trying to get a handle on just how complex his own mind could be,

So he can't help staging collisions with other people,

Which makes it hard for a contemplative person to focus while digging out pure information.

So along comes this trouble-stirrer, and he brings a little fluidity to the social mix,

But that could be for the good, because if we can ever really focus our minds while peering through all the turmoil,

As if "viewing flowers through mist"...we can dig up even deeper information.

The problem is, where can we go to let ourselves focus our minds?

If our single corner is too small, the context for understanding life will be insufficiently complex.


I wonder if we can dig out some kind of insight from the substrate of life?

Cascading cycles pour into interlock; fragile combinations are tenacious in their nooks; homeostatic states whirl in a fluid succession.

Relational space is a ferment of currents; everything is a precursor to something else; bonding agents leaven the staff of life; Time-the-Ruminant will have plenty to chew on.

Inward-blooming flowers make the mesh ever deeper; momentary states only serve to fertilize the process;

The outer bloom is just an epiphyte, only possible because of inner congelation.

Qian the Creative can only arise from Kun the Receptive;

Growth is a symphony written out of sight, a creation of micro-ecology!

..........

Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Topic(s) of this poem: biology
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
I used to be a biology major.
........

Here is a rough Chinese translation done by a friend:

"很可怕的)生命的原湯"

為甚麼半公尺長的DNA可以捲入直徑幾微米的细 胞核內?
捲好的DNA纜繩,為了裝入染色体要緊緊地纏繞幾道
又怎麼可能回到平時的長線狀 態?
當細胞要用到某一段信息,為甚麼脫氧核糖核酸的拉鍊能解開到剛好那個位置?
為甚麼D NA的雙螺旋體會按一分鐘100轉的速度解開而進行複製?
當細胞要分裂時,甚麼東西把染色體拉到 中間,排成雙對?
排雙的染色體,怎麼會進行即興的局部切換,以防止惡性組合?
不要相信常 言道「DNA是智能的分子」,是「信息量最大的物質現象」。
DNA是一個完全被動的載體,是躺在 細胞核中的窩囊廢!
有一個母體足以支撐所有的結構,又將之瓦解以帶入下一個階段。
在死板 的事實背後,有一個旋轉的舞蹈,不限於此時此刻,
信息基墊的排列祇能在酵素反應圈的漩渦中起作用 ,
脫氧核塘核酸要得到酵素瀑布的操作才可能產生蛋白質。
有一個能夠閱讀DNA,轉寫DN A,利用DNA的母體,
她從準備好的反應系統中放出滴滴奶酸,
使伸縮蛋白纖維依序拉動染 色體的排行進行曲,
而這種細胞內纖維的牽拉動作
是肌肉細胞必須加以發揚光大的本領。
這都是原生質在「流動」的狀態中發生的
你看這是多麼複雜的一種流動!
所以說這個母體 的複雜,不是DNA能跟她相比的
她複雜性的廣度,是眾多反饋圈的環環相扣幅度
她複雜性的 縱深,是能量轉換步驟不可逆轉的貫串性。
鮮活的原生質在多維度的程序中充滿支配規律的規律,
只有她才董得如何讓每一段DNA信息獲得遞進性的使用.

我們在人間也覺得,純粹 的抽象信息沒甚麼用處。
圖書館不聰明,只有讀書的人才叫聰明
讀書人不聰明,只有使讀書人 團團轉的人才叫聰明。
比方說領導,他不喜歡講抽象的信息,還有女人
她使人團團轉的本領好 像來自很遠的地方
甚至讓她自己覺得很神秘。
我們在人間還有一種人,一方面喜歡琢磨一點信 息,
另一方面喜歡使別人團團轉,而至於要選擇哪一套,
他的心理常常處於一種流動狀態。
他總要揣摸自己的心理規律有多複雜,
所以免不了跟別人發生碰撞,
使另一種人很難集 中精神,來琢磨一套抽象的信息。
攪和者就這樣來到我門當中,給社會增填了一點流動性,
這 樣也很好,因為只要我們真的能集中精神,
以「霧裡看花」的方式可以琢磨出更為深刻的信息,
問題是要找甚麼地方才能讓自己集中精神?
太小的角落,會使生活的情境變得不夠複雜。
不知能否向我們的生命基礎請教到一點啟示?
環扣的瀑布形成均衡的靜態,微環境維護著脆弱的 組合,
養素的香潔氣息瀰漫在聚合反應的多維關聯空間,
前驅者互滲,濃汁薰釀,精緻的腐爛 育出韌性。
向內綻放,向內編織,剎那間的成形只是過程的肥料,
外部的萌發是內部凝合的幻 化; 乾只能從坤中升起,
再大的生長,原來是微生態的交響。
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Susan Williams 01 September 2016

I am going to have to read this one again and again. There is much in this one that is beyond my area of education. I do know one thing.... as I read about that miraculous complex thing called DNA, I kept thinking about the sea as the origin of life theory. I do not think something this complex and intricate and specific could be put together randomly, accidentally, mindlessly. And this is just one factor of what makes up an organism. You may not agree with me at all. That's okay- -I still listen to you and feel the magic of the knowledge you share. Definitely a poem to reread and reread and reread and enjoy! Thank you for posting this. 10

3 1 Reply
Denis Mair 01 September 2016

Immense thanks for reading what I shared and responding thoughtfully. To claim that life originated from random, accidental collisions of atoms belongs to a mechanistic habit of thought. Such a habit believes in billiard ball causality, so it ignores another level of causality. On the level of conditioning causes, one finds interwovenness among properties of common substances (such as water, carbon, nitrogen) , and this makes many things possible. Interwovenness among laws and properties and tendencies of common substances is prior to natural selection. You are right on target when you associate the origin of life with the sea. The scientist Michael Denton celebrates the wonderful properties of water in his book THE DESTINY OF NATURE. I want to write a poem about this. Water's properties make it a universal circulator. As an important component in the scheme of life it is an enlivener: it cannot be corralled into the dichotomy of animate-vs.-inanimate. Water leaches trace minerals and elements out of the soil and makes them available to living things. As trace minerals are depleted from the soil, new mountains are thrusting up all the time from within the earth's crust. Water crumbles and erodes that rock, and in the process it brings new trace elements to flatland areas. Besides carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and Sulphur, all living things contain 20+ trace substances. We haven't even figured out all of their functions, but we need them, and water brings them! On top of that, the wavelengths of sunlight make a peak in the visible area of the spectrum. If that peak were shifted a bit toward ultra-violet, our planet would be over-exposed to ultra-violet light, which would damage genetic material and make life as we know it impossible. If the peak were shifted a bit toward infra-red wavelengths, the surface of our planet would be too hot for life as we know it. So the interlocking properties of matter are not just chemical reactions in a test tube. They tend to build up in tiers. It just gets wilder and woolier the more we understand about life on earth. So no, it is not random. You don't get interlocking laws and properties by accident. I personally think that there is a cosmic predisposition or telos toward intelligent life. I think the cosmos itself may be a sacred vessel, whatever that means. At least it is sacred enough to incubate life. I want to keep a place in my heart for that. I hesitate to use a word like design which is infected by human instrumentalism. If we claim that matter has to exist under a designing, controlling agency, maybe we end up diminishing matter's own marvelousness. In the world view of some, matter ends up being 'brute stuff' trodden under a mechanist's heel. The telos of life seems to be aimed toward the unknown, as our search for understanding should be. As humans on earth it seems we have a long way to go before we can get a handle on life in the cosmos. This is something else I want to write a poem about: The life-enabling wavelengths of Sol's light Are rays in the bodily aura of Cosmic Man...

1 0
Hans Vr 07 October 2018

I loved to read this wonderful eye-opener. So true, Denis, DNA is not intelligent. It is merely a code. The matrix, the wonderfully intelligent cosmos, the director of all processes, something our human mind may not be capable of understanding. Let us tune in, into that wonderful power of the universe, that versatile, endlessly creative and 'kind' Universe

3 0 Reply
Denis Mair 07 October 2018

You read with an understanding eye. That is exactly the kind of thing I want to get at.

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Akhtar Jawad 27 December 2019

How Amino Acids were produced, and how matter started reproducing, a very difficult topic and man could not understand it yet completely. We the believers have a very easy reply that there is a God who did it. However the poet is a great philosopher, he thinks and has succeeded to explain the evolution of life up to a certain extent.

1 0 Reply
Rob Lamberton 15 March 2024

"And what about a woman? Her way of sending a person spinning"

0 0 Reply
Rob Lamberton 15 March 2024

I used to be a biology major too!

0 0 Reply
Rob Lamberton 15 March 2024

"Behind the rigid fact there is a dance which is never confined to this moment."

0 0 Reply
John Carter Brown 05 March 2024

Boy, this is one heck of a lot of information for me. Mind boggling.

0 0 Reply
Ruth Walters 05 March 2024

This poem held me, the idea is brilliant! There are so many unanswered questions in life.

0 0 Reply
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