Tubes

This thought occurred to me today: we, all of us living things, are really just tubes. We take food into the tube, the tube does stuff to the food to keep us living, and then we push out what’s left of the food that we don’t want or need, and to make room for more food in our tubes. Seeing as how food is being processed by our tube, both ends of the tube, if not cleaned or cared for properly, can be pretty smelly at times.

Some of us are systems designed simply for the purpose of finding more stuff for our tube and, in some cases, to be put through other tubes(!). In other words, some of us are beings that simply provide for the tube. Others of us are systems for which the tube provides. The tube sustains us as we do other things. We do not exist solely for the tube, as evidenced by the occasion that we get so consumed by other things that we “forget” to feed the tube.

Anyway, that was my weird thought today.

Another thought I had, this one long, long ago but that has stuck with me, is that most things on our planet – man-made or naturally occurring – are, simply put, just containers of other things. If you think in that mode, you’ll see that it covers just about everything.

Almost anything: a garage contains a car contains a person contains organs contain blood (et.al.) contains cells. A house contains all your stuff which contains everything else. A house: container of containers.

It works even in the abstract: a photograph may not contain an image, as it is photo-sensitive chemicals on paper (or, in the digital sense, magnetically excited oxides arranged accordingly, and then stimulated electrons on a screen and/or ink on paper), but the image itself “contains” memories for us or for posterity. A skull contains a brain contains thoughts and memories.

And with that I must cease this post. I’ve just gotten too deep for myself.


dassall