Yesterday in the morning I took a walk in Braeburn Marsh.  I returned at the end of the day, as the sun was setting.  Luck is being at the right place at the right time.  I feel lucky when I experience beauty, or a moment of extraordinary accomplishment. Venturing off the path, the ground spongy, laden with decaying organic matter I felt the marsh under foot.  The old cottonwood trees tower above me, several nearly 100 feet.  They near the end of their life cycle.  On a dark night in a wind storm, when I am not present, one will crash to the marsh surface, to the damp earth that provided their nourishment.  An end is a beginning.  These photos are mementos of my walk.

A question comes to mind: how does one differentiate between something living, and something inanimate, inert?  There certainly is a difference.  How would one describe that difference?  How does the fluorine crystal displayed on my desk differ from a flower, or from a white tailed deer?  Fluorine is widely distributed in nature and supports the mineralization of bones and teeth.  After the presentation of the photographs I will offer a description of what makes the difference between the inanimate, and the animate.

 

Inanimate nature is self-contained,
achieving nothing, relying on nothing and,
hence, unerring…

A living function has a result
which it may achieve or
fail to achieve.

Processes that are expected to achieve something
have a value that is
inexplicable
in terms of processes having no such value.

The logical impossibility of such explanation
may be affiliated to the dictum
that nothing that ought to be,
can be determined
by knowing what is.

Hence
a principle not present
in the inanimate
must come into operation
when it gives birth
to living things.

— Excerpt, The Tacit Dimension by M. Polanyi p. 44, pub. 1966