The worm among us.
Creative Strategy #55: Know Thyself
The alimentary canal is one of nature's finest creations.
A brilliant machine of survival that is at one time
capable of propulsion,
an orifical searcher of scents and taste,
and a feeding tube and waste canal.
I realized something odd today.
We are mostly eating machines.
We are essentially worms.
The various appendages of evolution used like a Swiss Army Knife
for hunt, escape, camouflage, fight, grab, chew
--are essential variations on a theme,
functions to serve the Master Worm.
Structurally we are a hollow tube
coated with thousands of little mouths
that scoop whatever nourishment they can from the passing water, earth or air
tumbling on the long journey into digestion.
Now lest you think I am saying we are only eaters:
We are animals.
We hunt, we graze, shit, mate and and move for Shelter.
We breathe or we choke. Every animals does.
Structurally we are a machine that eats.
A tube of digestion outfitted
with useful armors and probing locomotive limbs and senses to gather food.
But make no mistake.
We are the alimentary tract.
We are cleverly disguised worms.
Nothing yucky about that.
But lets pull that drone back about a thousand feet and realize
that the tube shape of the worm is archetypal.
You see variations of it in many creatures:
The slippery tongue of the hummingbird.
The tulip of the rolled tongue
that probes for rain, light or bees in the fluted petals of the lilly.
Tubes are everywhere.
Conveyance systems.
Hoses. Pipes. Tunnels.
The flowers are reaching tubes, reaching for light and rain.
The root is a tube diving for its nourishment.
Digging its foundation.
The circle and the tube. The most efficient shapes of nature for funneling and dodging the forces of nature.
Turning the natural processes of swallow into a energy system.
Think of the fetus growing in the womb.
It comes with its own tube attached
at its belly button to the bloom of the placenta.
A hidden brain. A hidden flower.
It's been a long long arduous journey
for organisms to reach the surface, survive, and grow
until they eat every last ounce of energy they can find.
We are eaters. It is what we do. We are what we eat.
As efficiently as possible.
We transfer matter into energy
We are the tunnel through which matter is being plumbed for energy.
Life transforms into more and more sophisticated
solutions for the transfer of energy.
We are built to solve problems.
To find patterns.
We are built to eat.
Patrick OโLeary
7/13/22