stronger than steel — at room temperature in water. Humans manufacture ceramics with similarly high temperatures, but the abalone makes its shell in seawater by laying down a small layer of protein and precipitating the calcium out of the seawater around it. The abalone shell is “self-healing” because cracks within it actually strengthen the ends of thecracks so they don’t get bigger, unlike, say, an auto windshield. We’re just now learning to make dental ceramics this way.
“Imagine we could design our built environment as gently as the caterpillar,” I said, noticing how the 12 × 12, from this angle, looked so slight that it faded into the natural background.
Leah touched the silk thread, which the caterpillar makes benignly from the protein fibroin, and placed the dangling black caterpillar back on a leaf. “And think of its metamorphosis,” she said, “in its cocoon, a churning of natural juices, enzymes — and out comes a butterfly. Where are the toxics in that?”
We decided to explore Siler City. Because I only had the one bike, we took her car. Along the four-lane highway, we passed WalMart and other box stores, finding Siler City’s Main Street abandoned. The box stores had turned the old downtown area into a ghost town: stores boarded up, hardly anyone on the street. The seizing up I’d felt by the creek, that nagging tinge of hopelessness, slid into me again. For a moment, I was certain that the world would slip, inevitably, into a genetically altered, overheated place of lost uniqueness and forgotten joy.
But instead of being this negative state, I simply observed it. I was coming to realize that the ideal of warrior presence is not a constant state. Today, I consider it a peak that I scale up, often slipping off, but I can always see it there. Even those rare humans who have lived lives of total love write intimately about their fears. Mother Teresa, for example, revealed in her private diaries an entire lifetime of doubt, a current of negativity that she battled daily. Gandhi, too, wrote of his weaknesses, his feelings of greed. Martin Luther King Jr. said once: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” If these heroes had to struggle daily to overcome the world’s negative mental-emotional force field, imagine how much more the rest of us must struggle to maintain warrior presence.
Leah and I wandered on foot into one of the few downtown businesses that wasn’t boarded up, a Mexican grocery. We stopped in front of a wall filled with clear plastic bags of herbs, leaves, teas, and spices from Mexico. Leah picked up several, each eliciting a different memory from visits to her mom’s home in Mexico. Her mom retired from financial planning at forty-eight and, with her third husband, bought a house with an ocean view. There, she’d been living for the past few years, neither happy nor unhappy. Leah said that her mom described this state as a “permanent vacation,” piña coladas accompanying every sunset.
Out on the street we passed a domestic violence counseling center, the signs in English and Spanish. “And there’s Triple-A,” I said.
“AA, you mean. Alcoholics Anonymous, not the automobile club.”
“Of course,” I said, squinting to discern an odd sign that read “Holy Congregation of the Bladder” in front of a tiny church that seemed recently opened. “What strange salvation,” I said.
“Salvation from what,” said Leah. “Urinary tract infections?”
Whatever was not boarded up seemed to be either an odd religious cult or a substance abuse program. We didn’t pass more than a handful of people on the street. I thought of my neighbor José, who told me he’d walked backward into America. He’d crossed illegally at night through the Arizona desert and said he’d heard the federales counted the number of Mexicans who came in by looking at the footprints in the sand. “I walked in backward,” he said, “so they’d think
“Imagine we could design our built environment as gently as the caterpillar,” I said, noticing how the 12 × 12, from this angle, looked so slight that it faded into the natural background.
Leah touched the silk thread, which the caterpillar makes benignly from the protein fibroin, and placed the dangling black caterpillar back on a leaf. “And think of its metamorphosis,” she said, “in its cocoon, a churning of natural juices, enzymes — and out comes a butterfly. Where are the toxics in that?”
We decided to explore Siler City. Because I only had the one bike, we took her car. Along the four-lane highway, we passed WalMart and other box stores, finding Siler City’s Main Street abandoned. The box stores had turned the old downtown area into a ghost town: stores boarded up, hardly anyone on the street. The seizing up I’d felt by the creek, that nagging tinge of hopelessness, slid into me again. For a moment, I was certain that the world would slip, inevitably, into a genetically altered, overheated place of lost uniqueness and forgotten joy.
But instead of being this negative state, I simply observed it. I was coming to realize that the ideal of warrior presence is not a constant state. Today, I consider it a peak that I scale up, often slipping off, but I can always see it there. Even those rare humans who have lived lives of total love write intimately about their fears. Mother Teresa, for example, revealed in her private diaries an entire lifetime of doubt, a current of negativity that she battled daily. Gandhi, too, wrote of his weaknesses, his feelings of greed. Martin Luther King Jr. said once: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” If these heroes had to struggle daily to overcome the world’s negative mental-emotional force field, imagine how much more the rest of us must struggle to maintain warrior presence.
Leah and I wandered on foot into one of the few downtown businesses that wasn’t boarded up, a Mexican grocery. We stopped in front of a wall filled with clear plastic bags of herbs, leaves, teas, and spices from Mexico. Leah picked up several, each eliciting a different memory from visits to her mom’s home in Mexico. Her mom retired from financial planning at forty-eight and, with her third husband, bought a house with an ocean view. There, she’d been living for the past few years, neither happy nor unhappy. Leah said that her mom described this state as a “permanent vacation,” piña coladas accompanying every sunset.
Out on the street we passed a domestic violence counseling center, the signs in English and Spanish. “And there’s Triple-A,” I said.
“AA, you mean. Alcoholics Anonymous, not the automobile club.”
“Of course,” I said, squinting to discern an odd sign that read “Holy Congregation of the Bladder” in front of a tiny church that seemed recently opened. “What strange salvation,” I said.
“Salvation from what,” said Leah. “Urinary tract infections?”
Whatever was not boarded up seemed to be either an odd religious cult or a substance abuse program. We didn’t pass more than a handful of people on the street. I thought of my neighbor José, who told me he’d walked backward into America. He’d crossed illegally at night through the Arizona desert and said he’d heard the federales counted the number of Mexicans who came in by looking at the footprints in the sand. “I walked in backward,” he said, “so they’d think
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