The Pantanal
Though I hadn’t planned on visiting the jungle, the swamp was definitely intended.
When I was preparing for South America back in 2007, one of the documentaries I watched sold me on the Pantanal: isolated, largely uninhabited, and teeming with strange animals, like the world’s largest rat. What’s not to like?
The Pantanal, which basically means swamp in Portuguese, is an enormous wetlands in the heart of South America. In the wet season, November to April, frequent rain, and run-off from the Andes, raises the water level as much as 12 feet. The whole place becomes a virtual lake covered in lilies and dotted with islands. The rest of the year it’s a complex terrain of marshes, rivers, fields and jungle. The Pantanal is also the best place to see wildlife in South America. I’m not normally a big wildlife person. Distant glimpses of fur do little for me. But I am human, and it’s exciting to get a good view of exotic creatures. And though I don’t have the right camera for animal photography, when you can walk right up to them, I do OK.
My personal goal was to see a capybara (note: it’s capyBARa, accent on the BAR, pronounced just like candy BAR.) The capybara is the world’s largest rodent, and other than the cow, it's the most common mammal in the Pantanal. They don’t do much, mainly just hang out eating grass, or lounging half-submerged in the swamp. They’re a favorite food of jaguars, but according to the locals, they’re not popular among humans because the meat has a strong flavor.
I drove into the Pantanal on a dirt road and stopped at the first eco resort, Pousada Piuval. I wasn’t really expecting much, just a hotel in the swamp. They could have let me go for a long walk, and I’d have probably left satisfied, but the staff took it as their responsibility to keep guests occupied. I don’t usually like groups and guides, but everything was relaxed and pleasant. I went on guided walks, a night-time truck safari, and a boat trip, and then because I hadn’t gotten a good view of a capybara, they set me up with a truck and a private guide, and we went out and found some big rodents. I was impressed.
Before I left, I saw capybaras, and an ant eater, and a ring-tailed raccoon, and foxes, and miniature deer, and wild pigs, and quite a few monkeys, and caiman, and iguanas, and 35 thousand birds, give or take a few. If one were a birder, one would probably already know about the Pantanal, but if not, one would want to investigate promptly (birders speak very formally). Everywhere you look in the Pantanal there are birds, and not just little brown things, but herons, egrets, ibises, parrots, parakeets, macaws, toucans, kingfishers, pheasants, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, hawks, vultures, rheas, southern screamers, and huge jabiru storks of black and white and red up to five feet tall. And it’s not just one or two here and there, it’s birds everywhere, swooping and diving, cawing and chirping, nesting and foraging, and pulling snakes out of the water.
I think my only concern was that everything was a bit too easy. It felt kind of like staying in a huge petting zoo. One of the capybaras let me walk right up to it. How did it know whether I like strong-flavored meat? Of course, there were no fences, and no one was feeding the animals; mainly they feed each other. I guess as long as you don’t get eaten by an anaconda, the Pantanal is just easy. To make it a little harder for myself I rode another 15 miles down the sandy road, crossing a dozen decrepit wooden bridges. Soft sand is one of the worst surfaces on a motorcycle, but with the luggage removed it wasn’t too bad. It helped me feel like I had earned my visit to the swamp.
I started thinking about swamps and I realize that Houston is in a wetlands area, and I live only a few hundred miles from one of the best swamps in the world in Louisiana, not to mention the Everglades. Maybe I should visit some of those places.
I’ve done a lot of riding in the last two weeks, much of it hard work. Not all roads are made the same. Some roads are exhilarating, others are almost meditative, but some are merely drudgery. Traffic makes an enormous difference. If I have to spend all my time paying attention to other vehicles, I don’t get to think my own thoughts, and I never relax; it’s exhausting.
I’ve spent the last two days riding 560 miles from Cuiabá to Dourados, Brazil. It was the worst of the worst, narrow two lane highway bumper to bumper with trucks. The first 150 miles the traffic was so heavy there was virtually no passing. Everyone had to drive as slow as the slowest truck. We averaged less than 40 miles per hour; it was an excruciating crawl. Fortunately, some of the trucks turned East at Rondonopolis, but not nearly enough. The next 300+ miles were under construction. Some day that road will be four lanes, but by then they’ll probably need six. It’s an awkward situation; this is the main road from the coast into the Amazon. The more they improve it, the more they hasten the destruction of the jungle, but if they do nothing they unfairly burden the millions who already live there. At any rate, South America really makes you appreciate the importance of good infrastructure. We don’t always have it in the U.S., but its lack is debilitatingly obvious in SA.
I have to gripe about these roads, but they’re part of the deal. If you climb mountains there’s going to be days when the hiking is hard and unglamorous, but you expect that before you begin and it contributes to the sense of accomplishment. The same is true for a motorcycle trip. Days of drudgery are one of the costs of the achievement. Fortunately, I think the worst is behind me. Now that I’ve entered Paraguay the roads are much quieter. I rather expect that tomorrow in the Chaco, I might be nearly alone.
I suddenly realized that I haven’t mentioned speed bumps! I hope the person who invented them will spend many millennia in purgatory riding a motorcycle on a tree lined street in the late afternoon through an area of unmarked speed bumps. I hope he’s doing 60 when he misses one. (Well, you can’t actually miss them, you can only fail to see them.)
Speed bumps are like GHsx C67tq#B patches of gibberish in 888ekjluuuYTR the text. Sometimes !!!HEY, LOOK AT ME!!!! they’re really obvious, but other times they’re virtruealllly hidden, until you HIIIIITTTT them.
I don’t necessarily object to speed bumps in principle, but in practice I have objected to all of the hundreds I have encountered. They do accomplish their goal, which I believe is to allow motorcycles to pass trucks in the middle of town, and sometimes they actually slow the traffic. When they are well-marked, (with signs and brightly colored paint) and they’re well-made (none of this scraping the bottom of the bike crap), they’re not so bad. Argentina and Chile, you handled them fairly well. Peru, I think you have more speed bumps than cars, but at least they’re well-marked; good job. But Brazil, Oh Brazil, how do I put this?… You’re completely fucked up! You’ve got unmarked speed bumps everywhere, and there’s no logic behind their placement. I know you’re enthusiastic about life and stuff, and I suspect you just want to make driving more exciting, but for random hazards you’ve already got potholes. It’s redundant to combine random speed bumps with potholes. And Brazil, some of those speed bumps appear to be designed by the same monkeys that worked on your flag. A six inch by six inch speed bump is not a speed bump, it’s a curb. If you can hear metal grind against pavement when the cars pass over them, that’s a problem. Ah Brazil, maybe if you had a little less chocolate cake for breakfast…
I’ve been kind of hard on Brazil, but on the whole we’ve been getting along fine. In many respects it feels like the most developed country I’ve visited and the most unique. It’s distinctive culture is expressed in the architecture, the music, the food, and even the speed bumps. By the way, chocolate cake for breakfast must have been an Amazon thing; once I reached the Pantanal, I didn’t see it anymore, but I still see the flipflops and the hoses in the bathroom. I might also say more about the language barrier. Turns out, some Brazilians understand a great deal of my Spanish. Moreover, numbers in Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, and so I’ve actually been able to understand prices most of the time. When I don’t, I just ask the clerks to write them down in my Shakira notebook. (It was the only little notebook they sold at the office supply store in the Amazon. Apparently only me and tween girls carry notebooks in the jungle.)
I had worried that border crossings might be unpleasant affairs with lots of beauraucracy and gruff officers looking for tips. I've had none of the problems I anticipated.
From Brazil to Chile everything was very official, and everyone was extremely helpful. The Chileans got a bit confused amongst themselves about how to bring in a motorcycle, but they straightened it out. From Chile to Peru, the setup was peculiar. On the Chilean side I had to go to the cafeteria on the third floor and pay a few dollars to a woman sitting at a table for a form, and on the Peruvian side I had to play musical doors a few times to get the right documents, but in both places everyone was helpful and understanding.
From Peru to Brazil, the Peruvian side was easy, but it got interesting on the Brazilian side because there was no one there. This part of the Transoceanic highway is not a hopping place, but I was still surprised when I drove all the way through the customs building without seeing anyone. I drove about a half mile into Brazil before I decided I better go back and see why this was so easy. Maybe it's a trap?
So I go back to the customs building and I walk all the way around it. There’s a couple people hanging around outside, but they don’t look like the sort of people I want to be talking to. Finally, I knock on some unmarked doors and one of them opens. In fact this is the customs office and there’s a couple people inside, and they say they’re sorry, but they’ve closed the door because the air conditioner isn’t working. It took me a minute to process that comment, and I was going to point out that when the air stops working, that’s when you open the doors, but again I smelled a trap.
Now one of the guys at the counter, the apparent manager about 40 years old, is much too enthusiastic to see me. He’s trying to speak English, and he’s apologetic because he’s not very good, and he’s amazed that I’m on a motorcycle by myself, and he wants to hear all about the trip. And now I KNOW it’s a trap, but I can’t figure out the game. But then another guy comes into the office, and the manager introduces me like I’m famous, and this other guy is amazed too. So this guy has the filter for the air conditioner, and obviously he’s just cleaned it, and he puts it into the air conditioner and turns it on, and everyone waits with baited breath, but that didn’t fix it. I’m thinking, did he really believe he could fix the air conditioner by cleaning the filter? This trap is getting really elaborate. But then they get out the cell phones and it’s time to go take pictures with the Texan and his motorcycle. They ask the seedy looking guys outside to take the pictures, and their rolling their eyes the whole time. Everyone sends me off with a wave and a thumbs up; I’m still waiting for the trap.
But yesterday wins the border crossing weirdness sweepstakes. The Brazil/Paraguay border is in the middle of a bustling town, Ponta Porá. In fact, it’s one of those crazy towns where one side of the main street is in Brazil and the other is in Paraguay. Given this peculiarity, and my previous experience, I’m not all that surprised that I find myself a couple miles into Paraguay leaving the city without having noticed a border crossing. So I turn around and try to find the customs house. I can’t. But I see a cop near where I think it ought to be, and I ask him. He points to what is surely an abandoned building on the side of the highway. You’re kidding me, right? No, that’s it. Wow, there’s not even a sign. Well OK, there’s some faded letters on the building, but they don’t say anything that would identify it as the customs house. The parking lot is a pot-holed disaster and inside there’s two women at computers with no air conditioning. Of course, it turns out this is Paraguayan customs, and before they can help me I have to get an exit stamp from Brazil. I’m going to ask why, but I remember they’re not here to do philosophy, so I just ask how. The answer, of course, is to visit the Brazilian customs office at the airport. Duh, why didn’t I think of that?
They try to tell me where the airport is located, but I don’t fully understand, I just know it’s on the other side of the highway somewhere. Turns out it’s about a half mile down an unmarked residential street. Don’t airports usually get signs on the highway? If you ever find yourself having to fly into this airport, you’ve probably made a long series of bad life choices. It’s that kind of airport. Nonetheless, there’s a customs booth just inside the door, and they’re happy to stamp my passport. And now I return to the Paraguayan side, and the women welcome me to Paraguay.
These self-service border crossings are weird. Am I the only person crossing here? What if I don’t get the stamps?
In fact, I did get stopped in Brazil at a military check point. They looked at my passport and noted the stamp. If I hadn’t had it, I might have learned what getting trapped really means, or maybe not. Would they have cared? They seemed to be looking for contraband. They checked all my luggage. The first guy who greeted me exuded military stereotypes. He had a frightening aggressive smile behind aviator glasses, and a firm handshake in leather gloves. He poked and prodded everything. But then, as he was finishing up, two guys in casual civilian clothes came after to double check. They were obviously in charge, they spoke accent-free American English, and they made light conversation, including a joke about my map as antique GPS. In some ways they were scarier than the military because in a Bond movie these would be the evil geniuses, the others merely henchmen. I don’t know what they were hoping to find, and I don’t think you’re supposed to ask. In Mexico and Guatemala I went through several similar checkpoints, but I had kind of forgotten how intriguing they can be.
In the end, like virtually everything in South America, border crossings have been clunky but manageable, and the people have been thoroughly decent.
In my last post I was writing about truth and reality. My focus was on truth. You’ll recall that my basic claim is that a sentence is true if it fully conforms to reality. Further I claim that the word “truth” is contextual, like both “flat” and “know,” and when the context is raised to that of strict metaphysical standards no sentences are true. This, for the simple reason that sentences are composed of words, and no quantity of words can ever fully conform to the complexity and subtlety of reality. (Of course, as mentioned, words themselves are part of reality, so the problem can be understood as the inability to create a model of one property space with the elements of a different property space.)
Time to turn to reality: The obvious obstacle in talking about reality is that it has to be done using sentences, and we normally expect that sentences are only valuable if they’re true. So it might appear that I have set myself up for an impossible task, or even walked into a paradox. I’ve claimed that no sentences are metaphysically true, but now I’m going to try to tell you the truth about reality! This looks bad, but the solution is actually pretty simple: I make no claim that anything I say is fully true.
Language is our principle medium of communication and of thought, it is the largest portion of our web of beliefs. For sentences, it is far more important that they fit within our webs of belief, than that they conform to reality. Indeed I suspect that truth in a context is typically determined by fit within the context much more so than by degree of conformity to reality. (If this last point is correct, than some might think I’ve just retreated to a pragmatic interpretation of truth, where truth isn’t conformity to reality at all, but merely something akin to usefulness. However, I think it’ better to retain the claim that truth is conformity, but recognize that conformity is judged on pragmatic grounds relativized to a context. For example, when talking about why I can’t meet you for dinner this evening, the sentence "I am in Paraguay," is succinct and useful. In many contexts it’s extremely reasonable to assert that it’s true. In doing so, we are asserting that it conforms to reality, but when we analyze that assertion we realize that actual conformity is far less important than the role the sentence plays in my conversation. )
At any rate, my goal is to offer ways of thinking and speaking about reality that invite us to reflect on some of our deepest beliefs, and to show the possibility of adjusting or replacing certain beliefs. This has always been the way metaphysics works. In the past it’s usually been done under the illusion of revealing TRUTH, but as long as we’re aware of the more nuanced aspects of what we’re doing, there’s nothing intrinsically contradictory here to get worked up about.
Another preliminary comment worth making: I think many of our very deepest "metaphysical beliefs" are not things we would normally assert. For example, I think most Westerners tend to believe in “reductionism” which might be expressed as this way: The properties of an object are explicable by the properties of its parts. This is a very reasonable belief to hold for, many things given the way we interact with them. For instance, when cars and computers malfunction one should always look for a part that is responsible for the problem. But the belief in reductionism is not something that non-philosophers ever articulate for themselves. It’s so far in the background it never gets expressed as a sentence.
However, even philosophers who have thought hard about reductionism are unlikely to assert the belief, not because they can’t articulate it, but because it's part of our philosophical training to be reticent about asserting anything. There is a large literature about reductionism that shows pretty clearly that there are non-reductive relations in reality, and so philosophers know that they are not supposed to insist on reducibility. But asserting the belief, or consciously committing oneself to the belief is irrelevant; what’s important is whether the belief is operating in one’s web of beliefs. And it’s my opinion that by and large philosophers tend to fall back on the belief in reductionism when we think metaphysically. It just is part of the framework of their thought.
All thinking happens against a background of presuppositions. You can’t start from a blank slate. I think contemporary Westerners, and in particular analytic philosophers, tend to face reality with metaphysical presuppositions of determinacy. My goal is to make an effort to bring this framework of presuppositions to consciousness and call it into question. At a minimum what I hope to show is that our presuppositions of determinacy are not justified, and that we do not have to begin with them; there is an alternative starting point that doesn’t require determinacy.
Mostly what I have to say about reality is less an account of what I think REALLY exists, than a set of toy models illuminating what reality could be. In fact, I am convinced that many of our deepest beliefs are basically toy models; they are the elemental analogies by which we comprehend reality. My goal is to show that there is a functional set of toy models of indeterminacy with which we could replace the toy models of determinacy.
This is a terrible oversimplification, but speaking of “toy models,” I often feel like my opponents played with legos too much as children. It’s not that any of them believe that the world snaps together, or was made in Denmark, but the foundational models they fall back upon are carefully, determinately structured. I don’t share those foundational models, my models are always complex, indeterminate, and unstable.
The Greeks did everything first, and much of it best. I suspect the “essence" of what I have to say is prefigured in the contrast between Parmenides and Heraclitus. Parmenides began with intuitions determinacy; he followed them to their extreme, absurd conclusion. Parmenides argued that what is real is what IS, and since nothing that changes, IS, nothing that changes is real. That which is real must be eternal and unchanging. This may sound like Parmenides was beguiled by the linguistic misuse of the verb “to be,” but I think there’s something right about what he had in mind, and obviously Plato thought so as well. Plato proposed that the highest form of reality was an eternal and unchanging realm of essences to which our souls ascend after death.
At the other extreme there's Heraclitus, of whom we know very little except that he said that no one ever steps in the same river twice. Heraclitus proposed that all of reality is constantly in flux; there is NO eternal and unchanging reality behind the scenes. To my mind he was pointing out that we live in a world without structure.
Plato tried to make room for Heraclitus’ view as well, claiming that in this life we exist in a shadow realm of illusory change, but it’s clear Plato’s sympathies lie with Parmenides. The REALLY real is the determinate, so determinate it never changes. In the end, I too want to make space for both perspectives, and I think I can do so more equitably than Plato. However, my sympathies lie with Heraclitus, if only because as things stand, indeterminacy is the contrarian position.
Enough preface, let’s jump in: Imagine a two-dimensional grid within which objects interact as determinately as you like. Now imagine that the grid sags into the third dimension, in fact, imagine that in certain places the grid forms drooping bulbs swinging to and fro. Further, imagine these drooping, swaying bulbs collide with each other.
This is a toy model of emergence. The original two-dimensional space is any level of objects, say the atomic level.The interactions of the drooping bulbs is an emergent level, say the level of beer bottles and tables that emerges from the level of atoms. I think of the levels as "property spaces," and the talk of dimensions is metaphorical. My model might seem silly, but what is our current best thought about the relation between the properties of atoms and the properties of tables and beer bottles? With respect to mass, one is reducible to the other, with respect to temperature one is at least explicable in terms of the other, but there are other properties like extension and solidity which are far trickier. Extensions and solidity are products of the relation between objects at the macro level. That the beer doesn’t fall through the table is not merely a product of one atom not being able to pass through another. Extension and solidity only exist when collections of atoms interact with each other as collections.
As I have mentioned before we seem to suppose that reality must be animated at a single level of construction. But I don’t see any reason to believe this. Why shouldn’t reality animate itself at multiple, even infinitely many levels of construction. I described the model above as a two dimensional space sagging into a third dimension, but an alternative description could talk about folding the two dimensional space into a third dimension, the effect would be the same. Interactions across a new dimension would constitute new properties.
I know many people will be bothered by the metaphorical dimensions. What is this “dimension" into which a property space sags or folds? First, it’s surely wrong to think of it as a pre-existing empty space waiting to be filled. Instead, I imagine these “dimensions" being created by the sagging/folding itself, against a background of infinite potentialities. Putting it poetically: Imagine there is something like gravity that doesn’t operate merely on mass, but infinitely many potential properties, attracting all things toward each other. It’s only when critical mass is achieved in certain localities in certain respects that this “gravity" overcomes opposing forces, causing sufficient sagging or folding and the manifestation of properties.
The worst possible philosophy is rational speculation treading on the domain of what clearly ought to be done by empirical science. I understand that sentiment, but the goal of my model isn’t to replace science, but to suggest a model that makes authentic emergent properties conceptually coherent. I don’t think my model is necessarily in conflict with any observations, but if it can shown to be so that would be good reason to dismiss it, or at least adjust it. I do think it’s a legitimate role of philosophers to imagine the world as different than our best current science seems to imply, for if I am right, science is done within the same determinate framework that contemporary philosophy is done. There is no more valuable of of philosophy than exposing unjustified assumptions.
There is an awful lot more I should say here, but time is not on my side, so here are merely a few notes:
1. I think a whirlpool is a great example of an emergent object. Out of the water in a current, a pattern of behavior creates an object with new properties.
2. i do not imagine that reality is created out of a neatly hierarchical arrangement of property spaces. On the contrary, I suspect this space is more complex and convoluted than we will ever be able to fully appreciate. Moreover, I suspect there is always “seepage” from one dimension to another.
3. I imagine that there are infinitely many complexly interacting levels. Of course, I deny that there is any lowest level, or any completely self-contained level. I believe if follows from these claims that strictly speaking every event, and every object, and every “feature” of reality is infinitely complex. It quickly follows from this that no finite sentence could ever conform to reality.
4. I had hoped to sketch an explanation of how emergence on the model I’m presenting introduces “gaps” into the fabric of reality. These gaps can be best seen in the interaction between two “objects" sagging into a new dimension. These gaps are the prerequisite for indeterminate relations.
5. It turns out that one way of understanding indeterminacy is as infinite complexity. If the shape of an object is infinitely complex, it’s the same as it’s being indeterminate. One might think that this reduces indeterminacy to a function of our inability to appreciate infinite details. In which case it’s not a claim about metaphysics, but merely about epistemology. For instance, the Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex, but it’s obviously fully determinate, and to see it as indeterminate is merely a convenient short cut.
The complexity I assert of reality is greater than that of the Mandelbrot set. Appealing to Gregory Chaitin’s definition of algorithmic randomness I assert that reality is Irreducibly Infinitely Complex. You might think of it as a Mandlebrot set which requires an infinitely long equation to express, or perhaps better, one for which the presentation of the set is it’s only adequate expression.
If reality is Irreducibly Infinitely Complex then it is even in principle impossible to articulate a sentence which conforms to it as it is. At this extreme indeterminacy and infinitely complex determinacy are the same thing.
6. One might imagine that mathematics is exactly the language we need to describe reality with perfect conformity. I would agree, however, I suspect that it cannot be done in standard mathematics. We will find that the ornate complexity of reality will require ever increasing complexity within mathematics itself.
7. Reality is not made of legos; it’s not composed hierarchically. It lacks structure because it’s irreducibly infinitely complex.
8. There is needed here an enormously ambitious section on the relation between physical properties and objects and phenomena like meaning, purpose and morality. Much too briefly, emergence is a bit like “choices” instantiated by existence. When a property space comes into existence it chooses (incompletely and indeterminately) a new way of relating reality to itself. All of the properties of physical reality could have different, but certain property spaces have been instantiated (incompletely and indeterminately) and we live within them, constrained by them (incompletely and indeterminately).
Thought and language and meaning, purpose and morality are further developments within new property spaces. Because we are ourselves of the fabric of these spaces it is possible for us to alter the “choices” that have been made (incompletely and indeterminately), and yet, these property spaces are every bit as real as the property spaces of the physical.
My failures here are enormous.
I’m not really sure what butterflies are made of, but I know it’s yellow and sticky. Perhaps you’re thinking the yellow part is butter, which would kind of make sense given that they’re BUTTERflies, but the splotches on my windshield are not oily, and they don’t smell like popcorn even in the hot sun. (Why are butterflies called butterflies? Language is weird, but most likely they used to be eaten on toast.)
Anyway, I was trying to think of other yellow sticky things, and the first one that comes to mind is Elmer’s Wood Glue. I suppose butterflies might be made out of Elmer’s Wood Glue, but this seems implausible. To be certain, I lack a good argument against it, but sometimes in philosophy you just have to rely on intuitions.
It occurs to me that butterflies could be made out of a combination of components, something like bananas and rubber cement (of course, this is obviously a silly suggestion since bananas are not aerodynamic). But if butterflies are not homogenous this would dramatically increase the number and complexity of compositional options. Thinking through them is a challenge. The best strategy is to tackle the two components separately; color and adhesion. The adhesive properties of butterflies are obviously present in a liquid form–you can see this in the splash pattern–thus we can rule out velcro and magnets (neither of which would adhere to a windshield anyway). But the liquid has got to be lightweight in order to fly, so we need a list of lightweight sticky liquids. I Googled “lightweight sticky liquids” and it turns out that they’re all cosmetic products. Given that butterflies are generally attractive, composition out of cosmetic products does seem reasonable, but you can’t do philosophy merely with a google search, you’ve got to think critically. In fact, it turns out that most of the products that came up on Google were red liquid lipsticks. Not only is the color wrong, but butterflies don’t have lips.
I’ve pondered this for nearly 20 minutes now, and I’m thinking the solution might be something like jello sweetened with aspartame. It says “lite” right on the box, and it does come in lemon flavor, which is yellow. Lemon isn’t the best tasting flavor (I prefer Apricot or Black Cherry) but it is an attractive flavor because of the way it catches the light. Anyway, here’s the key insight: Butterflies transform from caterpillars into flying things. Jello transforms from a liquid into a jiggly thing. Coincidence?
Philosophy is hard, and I can’t claim that I KNOW that butterflies are made of lemon jello, and for reasons explained above, I can guarantee you that speaking with metaphysical rigor it’s not strictly TRUE that butterflies are made of lemon jello. Nonetheless, i trust that my reflection on the issues demonstrates a new and unique way of thinking about butterflies.
Next stop: Falling water.
Happy Birthday to my nephew Joe. Joe, by 14 you're making the choices that determine your life. Don't let this overwhelm you, but recognize it. Unfortunately, you can't know what the "right" choices will be, but here's some suggestions: Don't die, don't bleed out, and stay warm! -Curtis