Strangers And Aliens, Wanderers All

We are all strangers to our own bodies. We are molecules riding on the backs of our own cells. We are aliens and wanderers, strangers in a strange land.

Did you know that all the smells in the world are detected and internalized by the molecules that bind to the chemicals that make up the smells? Moreover, did you know that each of these molecules has its own preferences for which chemicals it can interact with?

And I had thought it was a case of merely sniffing.

Not so, not so. It seems that the lion's share of our interaction with the world is being done on the molecular level, with no real need of us--we living, thinking, feeling people--other than as receptacles, containers, hosts. We are superstructures, a flesh which on its own may as well be stone--enlivened only by the invisible power in the air--light, electricity, the flow, the chi--a busy vacuum sealed universe of subatomic lightning bolts, the dizzy orbit of electrons and electrolytes, intricately premeditated collisions and explosions, a lifestyle of subatomic particles

When is the last time you thoughtfully directed a single molecule about its business? Never.

I return to the nose. It seems that all the smells of the world are nothing to the nose without that they can jump on to the back of a specifically assigned molecule, which in turn gallops along to the brain--Ah, a rose is a rose, the scent of a woman, and so on.

On the purely pedestrian level of human sympathy, I cannot help but wonder how some of these molecules ended up being so unlucky in their assignments. Take for instance the molecule assigned to host the smell of dog shit. Or the molecule assigned to convey the odor of carrion, or of sweaty socks, or rotten milk, or bad breath. And so on. These molecules, as I surmise, must have come late on the day assignments were being handed out.

It is the same way for taste, for sight, for touch, for motion. You name it. Are we perceiving, or are we being perceived? Can we trust these molecules?

We had better hope so. They are, after all, in charge from beginning to end.