Step IV

Tangenting MOVEMENT COMPREHENSIVENESS PROCESS Part 1

THE STORY

There, just at eye level, lurked a huge yellow­and­black orb spider, whose web was moored to the tall spears of buffalo grass at them­edge of the arroyo. It was her universe, and her senses did not extend beyond the lines and spokes of the great wheel she inhabited. Her extended claws could feel every vibration throughout that delicate structure. She knew the tug of wind, the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth's wing. Down one spoke of the web ran a stout ribbon of gossamer on which she could hurry out to investigate her prey.

Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket and touched a strand of the web. Immediately there was a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur. Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped. As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational, extraneous, at best, raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully, like a vast impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider, I did not exist.

Moreover, I considered, as I tramped along, that to the phagocytes, the white blood cells, clambering even now with some kind of elementary intelligence amid the thin pipes and tubing of my body ­­ the conscious "I" of which I was aware, had no significance to these amoeboid beings. I was, instead, a kind of chemical web that brought meaningful messages to them, a natural environment seemingly immortal if they could have thought about it, since generations of them had lived and perished and would continue to so live and die, in that odd fabric which contained my intelligence.

(from The Unexpected Universe By Loren Eisely)

Tangenting MOVEMENT COMPREHENSIVENESS PROCESS Part 2

Hold your hand in front of you, and look at it.

As you look at it:

How many lines do you see?

How many of the bold ones?

How many fine lines are there on the palm?

How many on your whole hand?

Focus on one part of your hand:

What is below the surface of the skin?

Muscles. Nerves. Tendons.

How many veins running below the surface?

What minute organisms are coursing through

the blood in your hand?

How many different types?

How many different forms?

How many altogether, in the entire body?