August 12, 2020

I want to live a solar-powered life.  I can make out only the dimmest outlines of what that looks like, what it means, its affirmative contours.  I know it has much to do with drawing my energy from real-time sources – sources, that is, from which energy is generated and renewed very close in time (and space) to its point of use.  Here on Earth, the Sun is the ultimate source of real-time energy; indeed, from a human perspective (or a biological perspective, more broadly), you could say it is the source of real-time itself.

So to say that I wish to live a solar-powered life is, perhaps, just another way of saying that  I wish to live in real time, and not on borrowed time (which might be an oxymoron) or on stolen time (which gets closer to the truth, probably).  The logical conclusion of such a wish might lead me to say that I aspire to become a plant, so that I can draw my energy from the Sun directly.  But here I bump up against biology: it is blood coursing through my veins and not chlorophyll.  My essential carbon chains center on an atom of iron, whereas those of my plum tree – and every other thing that photosynthesizes – center on an atom of magnesium.  And that one tiny molecular difference, that one substitution of iron for magnesium in my lifeblood, means that while the plum tree lives by sunbathing, I must live by the plum.  

Plant-dependence is thus the very essence of my being.  I am removed from the Sun by an additional degree. My relationship to the Sun must be mediated.  Plants are the gatekeepers, the mediators, the go-betweens, the peacemakers.  Blessed are the plants.