When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself … that work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life. – Stanley Kunitz

A few billion years ago, microscopic “life forms” caused Earth to change from an uninhabitable nasty suffocating place to one more like we now know. As the movie Jurassic Park scientist character said, “Life, uh, finds a way….” So, here are these tiny forms of life Finding Their Way, and what they did was pave the way for all living things by transforming our Earth.

Sometimes I wonder, if I were transported back even a few thousand years, how would my breathing be? What would the earth smell like? How would my feet feel upon the ground, my eyes see color and texture? If a scientist took the inner workings, the soft tissue, of someone from that time and compared it to my soft tissue, what would the differences be? How have we evolved because of the changes in our atmosphere, and what we eat, how we move about or don’t move about, and how we live our everyday lives in response to happiness and having things and not having things, to the stresses and joys and overwhelming possibilities of just where are we headed and how life is lived now and our responses to each other as humans with varied thoughts and beliefs and the very nature of how we know everything that is going on everywhere twenty-four hours a day/night—how would we differ from the earliest “intelligent life?” To begin and end and begin and end and begin and end, round and round and round we go.

But I seemingly digress. Let’s see. Meteorites bombarded—carbon arrived. Bacteria partied and hooked up. Things began to change.

These tiny micro-organisms reproduced and belched and poo’d and thusly started the reactions to create the oxygen to change the atmosphere of our Earth to one where A Life Form would at worst be vaporized and also at worst (there is no at best here) asphyxiate in agony to one where we can walk along a garden and pick a fresh tomato and eat it, while a rabbit sniffs the carrots, and a butterfly sips from a flower, and a tree shades a dog, and a cat eats a mouse, and a child is born and it is protected—or it is not.

If you imagine our sun as weaker and that light from it was weaker, if you imagine the hydrogen sulfide and stinky fumes and the amount of carbon dioxide, this fiery place—sounds more like the Biblical apocalypse, doesn’t it?—as if the idea of the End of the World is not really the End of the Earth but the beginning of it. So, here’s this Earth with a stifling atmosphere and a red-orange color, and oceans that were a weird slug green color. Comets and meteors pounding the crap out of  Earth, vaporizing waters, creating noxious rain, and it is in this environment that Life, uh, finds a way.

An example is in Mexico, in the tropical rainforest, in the Cueva de Villa Luz. In the cave is a nasty smelling place of hydrogen sulfide—much like scientists believe the earth was a few billion years ago. Scientists study this cave, since they think it represents early Earth, for clues to how Life began. Inside the cave are single-cell bacteria that dribble slimy ick that scientists call snottites. The snottites are alive and they are in that hostile environment, thriving.

Bacteria. The most ancient form of life on our Earth. They adapt to what they need to adapt to. In the single-cell bacteria there is a molecule of DNA—and we all know that DNA is the Code of Life—allowing them to multiply. And in this cave, which represents Earth billions of years ago, there are towns and cities and continents of bacteria, which depend on their environment instead of being consumed by it.

Conditions on early Earth may have been far worse, but these bacteria suggest that primitive life could have thrived in extremely hostile environments . . . for more than a century, scientists have known that life is the result of chemistry, the combination of just the right ingredients in just the right amounts. – Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Dang, y’all!

And those main ingredients that make up (about 96% of) the building blocks of life, folks, for every living organism, are: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen—elements that are common in the universe, with our buddy, good ol’ flexible Carbon as the main element.

We are all connected, a chemistry experiment that despite of—or BECAUSE of—incredible odds was created by whatever you want to believe—I believe in science and discovery whether it proves these theories or discoveries correct or incorrect or somewhere in between, but whom or what you believe in is no less important to you and I respect that, as we should respect each other.

So, if these tiny little bitty single cell organisms can survive and thrive and create the conditions for everything as we now know it—if life despite its great odds and fiery circumstance and bombardments somehow found a way, then why, why, whhyyy, for gawd’s sake and all that is holy can’t I finish this goddamn book?

Why can’t you finish, or start, your book, piece of art, music, afghan you’ve been knitting for five years, room remodel, poetry chapbook, classic car refurbishment, comic book character, classes, movie, climbing that mountain, going on that trip, dating (uh, lawd, maybe I should leave this one out-ha!), exercising, drinking kale (haha—those who follow me on FB know what I’m talking about), calling that someone you’ve lost touch with, taking that chance to . . . ?

About Kathryn Magendie

Kathryn Magendie is an Amazon Kindle Bestselling Author of five novels and a novella, as well as short stories, essays, and poetry —Tender Graces was an Amazon Kindle Number 1 bestseller. She’s a freelance editor of many wonderful author’s books and stories, a sometimes personal trainer, amateur/hobby photographer, and former Publishing Editor of The Rose & Thorn Journal (an online literary journal published with Publishing Editor Poet/Songwriter Angie Ledbetter). Magendie’s stories, essays, poetry, and photography have been published in print and online publications.Born in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, her family moved her here-there-yonder until her feet were for many years stuck in the murky strange swamps of South Louisiana. Then! One fine morning over twelve years ago, her long-but-not-forgotten dreams came true and she unglued her feet, leaving behind those moss-filled grandfather oak trees, and returned to the mountains to live in a little log house in the Cove at Killian Knob in Maggie Valley, Western North Carolina. Here, she spins tales, edits manuscripts/books and websites, drinks strong dark black coffee, and from her porch over-looking the Great Smoky Mountains contemplates the glow of Old Moon—Cove Crow and his family speak to her and she listens.

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