On a Street...It Seemed to be Raining
Ashes that Day...
Ashes that Day...
"I saw you in Sarajevo...uh, 1942. Near the train station. I mean, what was left of it"
"Yes, I remember. But I had seen you earlier that day. As Napoleon's cavalry finally took Innsbruck."
"Yes, it was cold that day...bitterly so."
"Which day...they were all so very cold as I remember."
"I meant to stop, but it seemed like I should go on."
"We all died that day anyway...despite your efforts to make it otherwise."
Why is that do you suppose? These recurring connections over time, history...often in those moments when the world or the person is gripped in some emotional maelstrom of unending conflict. Where the smoke clears briefly from a distant, yet highly personal battle, and suddenly there is this person you know, or are demanded to know by some unknown force, standing silently in front of the burned-out buildings that were once a city, a town...a place of refuge...lost. No, not reincarnation, meddling aliens, nor a previous life; certainly not the unconscious wanderings of a time traveler. Something else....But what?
The Human Genome Project produced the first complete sequences of individual human genomes. As of 2012, thousands of human genomes have been completely sequenced, and many more have been mapped at lower levels of resolution. The resulting data are used worldwide in biomedical science, anthropology, forensics and other branches of science. There is a widely held expectation that genomic studies will lead to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and to new insights in many fields of biology, including human evolution. [Wiki]
Is it possible that there is much more to a strand of DNA than one could possibly imagine? And I muse on that notion a lot because for some reason -- some demand I fail to comprehend, they wander in and out of my life. Over my years, I have visited with many ghosts -- most benevolent by intent, as if they too are suddenly lost on a vaguely familiar field. I've stood on foreign ground and seen my own footprints in the dust; shed blood on countless battlefields not of my choosing. Questioned deeply whether my sanity is intact -- or merely infected with a deep desire to dwell in some other century, some other place that the heart craves, but the boots can never find. I could ask God, but then I don't believe in God, nor do I choose to seek a moral compass that I already possess; no, earned along the low and high roads of a strictly personal history -- further, that all good and all evil lives within the bounds of my being and accountable only to the artificiality of conscience. I seek no redemption elsewhere. It is here. It is now. But it has also been now; elsewhere.
Science scratches away at this mystery...though it is very much like searching a colony of ants for one leader among billions. I have blue eyes. It was said once that I was of Nordic/Germanic descent. I am also considered an American. Yet I claim no nationality because I became a human long before there were maps, boundaries...borders. And today, it has been revised -- that I was of the Neanderthals...those blue eyes carried over the millennia...the physical baggage of antiquity. Ancient, primal, perhaps a decent sort of savage in an era where perhaps decency ended in early death. Before there were nations, before there was humanity as a whole of something much smaller. Another animal, a predator...one that still knows the arts of predation 200,000 years later. And what is the why and how of such an unnecessary skill...to crouch in silent waiting at Safeway...then leap upon an unsuspecting can of corn?
And how to explain my affinity for the horse? Ah...a relative was a horse breeder, stable owner, leader of a armed rebellion in the late 1700's. My great-great grandfather was a blacksmith who came over from Norway in the 1800's. My grandfather kept a silver-capped horse's hoof -- simply engraved with the name Oluf. Why did I know it, covet it...keep it with me when all else was lost in those storms within a difficult mind? Why perhaps, did I become a horseman, a farrier... a lover of fast horses long before I knew these people even existed? Coincidence? Possibly. But then, how did the horses know me, accept me as easily as they did? Just maybe, we too, had crossed similar paths, fought distant battles...perished together on some blood-soaked field long forgotten. We left our bones to mark our passing, but perhaps the core of what we were, what we saw...the sounds and scents of distant eras traveled forward in the intricate pathways of our singularly unique fingerprint -- that DNA.
And how to explain my affinity for the horse? Ah...a relative was a horse breeder, stable owner, leader of a armed rebellion in the late 1700's. My great-great grandfather was a blacksmith who came over from Norway in the 1800's. My grandfather kept a silver-capped horse's hoof -- simply engraved with the name Oluf. Why did I know it, covet it...keep it with me when all else was lost in those storms within a difficult mind? Why perhaps, did I become a horseman, a farrier... a lover of fast horses long before I knew these people even existed? Coincidence? Possibly. But then, how did the horses know me, accept me as easily as they did? Just maybe, we too, had crossed similar paths, fought distant battles...perished together on some blood-soaked field long forgotten. We left our bones to mark our passing, but perhaps the core of what we were, what we saw...the sounds and scents of distant eras traveled forward in the intricate pathways of our singularly unique fingerprint -- that DNA.
gene
(j
n)
n)
n.
A hereditary unit consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. Genes undergo mutation when their DNA sequence changes.
[German Gen, from gen-, begetting, in Greek words (such as genos, race, offspring); see gen
- in Indo-European roots.]
- in Indo-European roots.]
Dreams. We all dream. Mine are in color, sometimes black and white...in the deep Rem sleep of early morning, when the mind attempts vainly to put the day's files in some kind of rational order...I often dream in languages or subjects I know nothing about. Yet I do. And upon awakening, I do not. And most have a veil of anxiety wrapped about them...a distant fear unresolved or simply carried forth into another era, seeking perhaps the same solution for a millennial of unresolved conflicts. The workings of a mind both brilliant and complex...yet truly ancient in origin, still living primal by a necessary kind of hindsight. But oddly kinder, more compassionate perhaps than what daylight affords me. Two paths of sub-consciousness in conflict -- the day and night of mere human existence -- the antithesis and agony of owning this stray dog of conscience...that follows at a distance, holds no true loyalties, yet still tolerates the fleas upon his back. But then he is so much like this world. For the wrong choice, the wrong road to cross...he dies. And so do the fleas. But never in a dream, for in dreams we merely cover the ground between the many deaths that mark our passing.
A gene is a long stretch of the staircase. It contains a particular sequence of A’s, C’s, T’s, and G’s. The sequence is the code for the specific protein the gene is “for”. (A simplification, but fine for today.) A DNA molecule contains millions of bases — steps of the staircase — a gene may contain thousands of them.
And perhaps much, much more. It is estimated that a huge portion of DNA has no known or recognizable purpose...much like a blank spot on an unfinished canvas.
I tend to believe that one day science will discover that among the thousand's of different functions, the human genome may also have the capacity to record individual human experiences over the many centuries...if specific genetic lines are never completely severed. Just as we have barely uncovered the contents and purposes of individual chromosomes; the ants among the colony -- we have also failed to understand the purpose of that 2/3 of the brain we leave unused. Maybe we don't want to know, maybe such knowledge would be the final breach between science and religion -- man as merely another animal, beholding to no other power than survival. But I know for me...when my awareness is at its peak; heightened by circumstances, danger, the gentle touch of a passing ghost...that stranger on a corner; a face filtered through the passing blackness of a sudden, startling realization...is no longer the stranger I believed them to be. And neither am I.
For Those Who Know There is Always More...
Collages: A. Juell (2nd grade art class revisited) and a tip of the hat to: John Royce's, "The Legend of the Great Horse" trilogy.
Found at TheGreatHorse.com. Imagination is a gift shared by all.
In many species, only a small fraction of the total sequence of the genome encodes protein. For example, only about 1.5% of the human genome consists of protein-coding exons, with over 50% of human DNA consisting of non-coding repetitive sequences.[90] The reasons for the presence of so much noncoding DNA in eukaryotic genomes and the extraordinary differences in genome size, or C-value, among species represent a long-standing puzzle known as the "C-value enigma".[91] However, some DNA sequences that do not code protein may still encode functional non-coding RNA molecules, which are involved in the regulation of gene expression.[92]
C-value enigma? Hmm......
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