.JPG)
as the earth does with the moon--the earth pulls the moon and centers its path. And the moon pulls the fluid bodies of the earth, even within our own bodies.
Sym- "with" bios "life." Life together, life cumulative, life collective.
As probiotic, antibiotic (for- and against- life).
As sympathetic (suffering/feeling together with -- you in my arm again).
As symptom (circumstances seen together).
As symmetry (measurements taken together to form a pleasing whole).
As syntax (elements arranged together to make some sort of sense).
As synesthesia (multiple senses experienced together).
As synchronicity (events falling together at the same time to create magic).
Synesthesia could be my middle name, and I know synchronicity (to say I believe in it would be far too weak an assertion). Easy though it is to disparage the Internet, it is a fantastic fulcrum of synchronicity. As I began to think about this post, to reflect on "symbiosis" and all it means, from my kitchen ferments to collective humanity's potential to turn around the ship of global warming, I found myself listening to an interview with fellow Israeli Anat Baniel. She's one of those wonderful holistic bodyworkers who became wise to how using the body's movements can "rewire" the brain (align the synapses, where nerve endings touch together).
I was thinking about symbiosis, right? --about how all beings are connected and thus influential on one another. Go there, and it's tempting to go one more step to "we're all the same."
The wonderful thing about Anat's message was that she was saying the opposite of this, and at the same time she was reinforcing that we are all connected. Her point was that a lot of physical pain and range-of-movement issues, and also a lot of the behavioral and spatial problems autistic children suffer, are predicated on lack of differentiation. If you have a series of vertebrae all moving together as if fused, you're not going to know the flexibility that would otherwise be available to you. If multiple areas of your brain all light up in response to a stimulus that "should" only affect one part, you could end up being excitingly synesthetic, or you could lack the filters and buffers to respond appropriately to a situation.
I guess that's why we all need to be the best self we possibly can be. I can't harm myself, because you are in me. But without differentiation, yes, there would be no war; but also there would be no musical cascades of notes, no art, no sentences, no poetry.
Our lives, together, side by side, interlinked, each one of us unique as the tile of a mosaic, different in our location within the whole, different in our individual certain sparkle.
