cold monkeys
Thinking about why I didn't ride my bike today (instead opting for the ever-stalling Green Line, therefore missing my connecting commuter train to work) I said to myself, "Cold is my least favorite element." But cold is not an element--it's the absence of the element Fire. It's the bitter, painful withholding of the sun's love. Cold is the void that is always there, but for nuclear efforts of our closest star.
The biggest miracle of the Earth is the generally constant temperature above the freezing point of water (and consistently below the boiling point). However, great swaths of the planet--the top and bottom, as defined by the sun--spend much if not all of the year below freezing.
Plants there, when they rarely occur, are adapted to have short growing seasons. Animals--mostly birds and mammals--developed thick insulating coverings above and below the skin. Humans, deprived of plants, adapted to eat the raw frozen flesh of animals, and likewise wear the skins of animals. To expose their own furless and featherless skins is to freeze and die. Modern people, wrapped in artificial skins eat preserved food from packages and cans, or food transported thousands of miles from warmer places.
Humans, like all primates, are tropical animals. Our buildings are in large part attempts to create climatic comfort--tiny subtropical zones, always 'sunny,' always just below 70 degrees f. Tropical insects: cockroaches, houseflies, grain moths, etc. (and their predators: house centipedes and myriad spider species) have joined humans in our enclosed oases.
Doubtless, some people reading "like all primates," above, have thought of Japan's snow monkeys. Silly macaques! How did they get there? Their tropical memories lure them to the hot springs. What did they eat before their fans and documentarists provided them with rice and sweet potatoes?
The biggest miracle of the Earth is the generally constant temperature above the freezing point of water (and consistently below the boiling point). However, great swaths of the planet--the top and bottom, as defined by the sun--spend much if not all of the year below freezing.
Plants there, when they rarely occur, are adapted to have short growing seasons. Animals--mostly birds and mammals--developed thick insulating coverings above and below the skin. Humans, deprived of plants, adapted to eat the raw frozen flesh of animals, and likewise wear the skins of animals. To expose their own furless and featherless skins is to freeze and die. Modern people, wrapped in artificial skins eat preserved food from packages and cans, or food transported thousands of miles from warmer places.
Humans, like all primates, are tropical animals. Our buildings are in large part attempts to create climatic comfort--tiny subtropical zones, always 'sunny,' always just below 70 degrees f. Tropical insects: cockroaches, houseflies, grain moths, etc. (and their predators: house centipedes and myriad spider species) have joined humans in our enclosed oases.
Doubtless, some people reading "like all primates," above, have thought of Japan's snow monkeys. Silly macaques! How did they get there? Their tropical memories lure them to the hot springs. What did they eat before their fans and documentarists provided them with rice and sweet potatoes?