From Mare’s Nest:
MOON: Why are you in the middle of the road? Let me tell you why you’re in the middle of the road. Once, a long, long time ago, there was a tiny molecule riding the surface of the sea.
Our molecule was thrown about. The water was rough, and it had to adapt or break. But then a storm came up, and our molecule was struck by lightning. This charged it with a strange energy. This was the origin of life, or Ool.
So there was our molecule in the sea. Our sea was soupy, warm and dense, with a bloom of oily bubbles in the crest of the waves. Our molecule sealed itself inside one of these bubbles, and that was the first body.
From The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe:
The whole world was coming to pieces molecule by molecule now and swimming like grease bubbles in a cup of coffee, disappearing into the intergalactic ooze and gasses all around–including his own body. He lost his skin, his skeleton, his pulmonary veins–sneaking out into the ooze like eels, they are, reeking phosphorus, his neural ganglia–unraveling like hot worms and wiggling down the galactic drain, his whole substance dissolving into gaseous nothingness until finally he was down to one cell. One human cell: his; that was all that was left of the entire known world, and if he lost control of that one cell, there would be nothing left. The world would be, like, over. He has to rebuild himself and the entire world from that one cell with a gigantic act of will–too overwhelming. Where does a man start? With California Route 1 so he can get out of here in his car? or will it turn out to be merely the filthy Rue Ventru with the Bastille mobs waiting? or start with the car? the differential? how do they make the bastards? or the beach? all those freaking grains of sand? the marsh grass? the tourist cabins? got to put every blue door back? or the ocean? or leave it dry? save making all those filthy blind bathosphere black animals down there . . . or the sky? how far does it go? the Big Dipper? the Ursa Minor? the Delphinium? suppose it is really infinite concentric spheres of crystal making infinite gelatinous submarinal vibrations? the Dead? the Pranksters? Kesey, Kesey’s out for good, Kesey and the bathosphere brutes–but with a superheroic effort he begins. But by the time he gets himself remade, it is too much. It is overwhelming. He makes his car. He makes the parking lot and the beginning of the road out. He’ll make the rest of it as he goes along. Freak it! Split! Leave the rest of the known world to its own devices, out in the gasses. He jumped into the car and gunned off; and smashed it into a tree. A tree he hadn’t even put back yet. But the crash somehow pops the whole world back. There it is; back from the fat-bubbling ooze. The car is smashed, but he has survived. Survived!
Previous “Juxtaposition” posts can be found here.
