"All stories have a beginning" "The beginning of my story is lost in limbo" "Like you, like us all, I have forever lost the memory of my birth" "Was I born the day my mother brought me into the world?" "Or the night my parents made love?" "And prior to that moment where was the matter that one day would combine to become me?" "Where had it been dispersed?" "That galaxy of billions and billions of atoms that would become me?" "Towards what plant?" "What rock?" "What animal, what face?" "Did they migrate before ending up in me?" "And even before Life appeared even before the Earth took form from stardust where were they?" "Where were those pieces of the puzzle?" "Was there already something of what would some day become me at the origin of origins when the universe emerged from the void?" "My history is one with the history of the Universe" "In the beginning of all beginnings at the origin of origins there was nothing" "I cannot say "at that time"" "for time did not exist" "I cannot say "in that land"" "for space did not exist" "All was nothingness dark darker than a moonless night more silent than the grave emptier than the desert wastes" "Suddenly the void brought forth a tiny egg of energy and matter" "And Space and Time were born" "This infant universe expanded with great speed swelling like a gigantic pumpkin" "The dough of the universe was at first smooth and regular" "Then the first lumps appeared mere clouds of gas that became the galaxies" "Within these galaxies stars came into being fiery cauldrons in which were formed all the atoms that make up our world" "These minuscule seeds of matter were scattered like dust in the wind and were sown throughout space" "The atoms that would form clouds and mountains butter?" "ies and tigers" "?" "owers and ourselves and many more things too numerous for my mouth to utter" "In a corner of the universe like a drop of milk in the darkness of the void the Milky Way took shape:" "a breeding ground for a hundred billion stars" "In a distant suburb of this galaxy our planet Earth was born" "It grew by scavenging the crumbs left by a brand new star, the Sun" "The young Earth burned like a dish just out of the oven" "In the beginning, the Earth was not the earth" "It was all fire" "It was the Planet Fire" "Now the molten rock had cooled and the vapors from the sky rained down fooding the earth to create the seas" "It rained for thousands of years" "The Planet Fire became the Planet Ocean" "But all this water which had filled the oceans and made the rivers run over the still smoking land was not a body like the others" "It was a shapeless chaos capable of taking on any form" "It was the universal binder the sauce in which everything can be mixed that invites combinations of all sorts" "Thanks to this brew matter on Earth had made its enterprising way" "In little sun-heated crucibles full of water and salts a kind of hot broth formed the primeval soup" "Matter attempted a new way of existing that resists the devastating power of Time:" "tiny closed-in, self-contained bubbles created the notion of inside and out like so many hermetic worlds tinier than grains of sand" "These were the first offspring of Life" "If you add a drop of milk to water for a moment you will see regular shapes appear that seem to be alive" "But this is not life" "The shapes gradually break up and chaos prevails" "Even smoke can create shapes" "They vanish as quickly as they are born" "Life is a form that endures" "A form fighting against time" "A form that continues despite the universal law that drives all organized things toward disorder and chaos" "Stranger still:" "a shape that remains the same whereas the matter it is made of is constantly renewed" "My mouth my tongue, my lips which speak to you now have continually renewed their cells since my life began" "Every hour of every day billions of them die and are replaced in my body" "Yet I am still me like a river remains a river even though fresh water runs in its bed" "We are not beings of matter" "We are forms irrigated by matter living rivers that snake their way through time" "Life is a vortex that sustains its own motion over and over again" "Life had the entire ocean to itself and for three billion years it was content with that" "But for a sheep the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and beyond the shores stretched the virgin world of the land masses" "And so the fish took a liking to the earthly paradise" "And animals with legs were born" "And the Earth teemed with creatures and millions of claws, nails and hoofs trod the soil of the continents" "In the water you dance nimbly in a liquid that contains you and carries you" "To venture onto the Terra firma is to change planets" "The dance is over, it's time to walk" "And gravity is unforgiving" "The body weighs heavily" "Very heavily" "Legs, with their framework of bone support it like a living pillar" "The world is a great labyrinth full of mysteries and perils" "Lost in this vastness each living being raises an invisible barrier around itself" "Inside this magic circle in this familiar space in which it knows every corner it feels safe" "If an unknown creature crosses this line then begins the time of combat" "Life has begun" "GS tenuous GS foam" "Now it sweeps across continents boiling over like milk from a pot" "One plus one makes three" "Life has a funny way of counting" "That's how it has spawned masses produced multitudes" "But before making three one must unite with one" "Like two magnets these islands of foam attract and merge into one another" "And so love was born" "We are all born of love" "Born of this rule in the game of life that declares it takes two to make a third" "Each of us possesses only half of what is needed to create another" "There is only one way to approach the other half:" "seduce it" "Seduction is a power that acts at a distance like the attraction between two bodies" "It's a call:" "overpowering insistent" "Desire, dear desire are you indeed requited?" "Never has a beauty put up with an impatient suitor" "In love, the shortest path is always the most sinuous" "When lovers meet they celebrate with a dance" "When lovers agree they embrace tightly like smoke blends with fire" "When, at the lovers' ball the suitors are many quarrels threaten" "When lovers are united..." "Ah!" "When lovers are united..." "Love is what drew me from nothingness" "Then I had two lives" "One in which I lived in my mother's womb" "The other in which I lived in the great wide world" "From the time I was conceived to the moment I was born" "I lived a condensed version of Genesis" "In the beginning, I was a sea creature" "The water pocket replaced the primeval sea of the world's beginning" "At this time when I was no bigger than a bean" "I had a striking resemblance with animals" "In that age in which our bodies are slowly conceived and kneaded we are all spitting images of one another" "For we are like rivulets of water surging up from the same source" "Like the veins of the same leaf the branch of the same tree" "We are members of the same tribe the great tribe of the Living" "And so I was part fish and part frog while still living in my mother's womb with gills in my throat and fins on my sides swimming between two seas in my round, elastic aquarium" "Every being builds on itself cell by cell like a large village with its streets and neighborhoods while the tam-tam of the heart beats away" "And veins trace figures through the body as rivers do across the earth" "Matter moves toward chaos like the river flows down to the sea" "We, the living, are like canoes beating against the currents of time" "We cheat with time" "And time knows only one road runs down only one slope that which leads to decay" "We preserve our living form by destroying other living beings" "Our existence is always the consequence of plunder" "For life is cannibalistic" "Life devours life" "Everything that begins must end" "Otherwise, what use is time?" "And no one has ever contradicted time" "Who has ever seen a river turn back to its source or a chick return to its egg?" "In the end, the consuming flames always lose their appetite and die" "The towering mountain finally kneels and stretches out like a plain" "As for life it goes against the grain of time" "It appears, grows and blooms in a world where everything rushes toward greater disorder" "It flees the peace and quiet of the inanimate and advances like a high wire artist along a tight rope forever delaying the day of reckoning" "But we cannot dodge indefinitely the slings and arrows of time" "That is forbidden" "One day my body will give up the struggle and return to the world this matter of which I am made" "This galaxy of billions of atoms that was once me will die as stars die sowing their matter through space" "These atoms that came to dance within me will go dance elsewhere... one, two, three... one, two, three... and off they go" "They will migrate to a butter?" "y's wing the bark of a tree the plume of a cloud or the hair of a flea" "And I shall leave off my song here" "So that others may sing it in their own way"