LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS ON THE TESLA AND CHLOROPHYLL

My Beloved likes to regale people with his esoteric and ucannily diverse knowledge. That is why I know that the Tesla electric car has no acceleration*: it's at 100% torque all the time. The sensation is described as being slammed into your seat, unable to move. What fun is that? It's cool on an academic level, but the acceleration is where the adrenaline and excitement come from. Can you recall that feeling right now? The bottom-dropping-out-of-your-stomach sensation? Falling in love is like that, or almost. Something somewhere, just behind my belly button, clenches and twists and my eyes close involuntarily. (No wonder people liken it to riding a roller coaster.) The attraction, the anxiety, the excitement of risking getting comfortable and letting go of the ohmigod handle, come what may...

Why is it that you feel that feeling of love in the pit of your stomach? [GEEK ALERT! GEEK ALERT!] I've read that during embryogenesis the muscle that forms the left arm drops, and a portion turns into the heart. That's why, during a heart attack, the pain can manifest as a weakness in the arm. I wonder if that's why you feel love in your belly? Maybe it originates from the ribs (as in, from where God took Adam's rib to make Woman)?

I chuckle at myself for that last comment. I don't believe in God. I'm barely even spiritual. But we were just at a wedding last weekend, and the story of the creation of Woman was a reading selection so the tale is fresh in my mind. And this afternoon, sitting at the park during sunset, the fading light made a red-leafed maple glow electric crimson. I commented aloud that it was so beautiful, it made me wonder if the show wasn't planned deliberately for man's enjoyment. Why else would retreating chlorophyll make such beauty? Which, of course, got me thinking why I thought it was beautiful in the first place. Was my enjoyment of the display part of some design or part of an evolutionary selection to make me contemplate higher powers? Or what biochemistry was there in my eyes and brain to make me so responsive to this [perceived] color?

Someone recently commented to me that after experiencing the awesome power and terror of a thunderstorm in the Grand Canyon, she had new appreciation for why Native Americans worship natural gods. When I experience the toe-curling jolt down my spine when My Beloved kisses my neck or the autumn fireworks, I know what she means.



photo by SKIPSHEPARD
* True to form, My Beloved pointed out the Tesla does, in fact, accelerate.  The point I am making about origination of the gut-wrench of True Love is still valid.  Thank you, Jacques Cousteau.