The Upswing
From packaged potentialities to kinetic vivacity
(For an introduction to “packaged potentialities” and an evocation of springtime wonder, I recommend revisiting last April’s Dendroica post.)
Seeds. Buds. Eggs. Spores. Cocoons. Pollen grains. Sperm. Stem cells. All seemingly in stasis, yet active inside, biding their time, waiting for the right signal to germinate, unfurl, hatch, divide, diversify.
Packaged potentialities, now expanding at full tilt in this season we call springtime.
We say they are dormant, but that word does not mean what it ought to. To most of us, dormant is one step above dead, a state of inert inactivity, more like a doormat than a door to a new world.
Linguistically it means asleep, as in dormitory or the Spanish verb dormir. But the sleep, the stasis, is only a small part of the story. The rest, the interesting part, is the potential. In every seed: everything required to grow a plant, to nourish the first roots and leaves, to inform cells when and where to divide, to seek sunshine and absorb water and minerals and join forces with fungi and build strong stems and produce flowers and ultimately more seeds, more packaged potentialities. In every sperm and egg: the beginnings of a new animal, a blueprint for development from single cell to trillions of specialized cells, all coordinated as one organism. That is not what I would call asleep.
Our language is not well suited to express the wonders around us.
We are familiar with energy transitions. A swinging pendulum has potential energy at the top of its arc, where it is still, and kinetic energy at the bottom where it is moving fastest. There is a parallel here; let us call it vivacity: the living equivalent of energy. Seeds, buds, spores, eggs, dry mosses have potential vivacity, buried under snow or hiding from winter winds. Verdant mosses, seedlings, insects, blossoms, animals, humans, mushrooms have kinetic vivacity, all of their potential realized in form, in function, in uncountable coordinated chemical reactions, a miraculous alchemy of being-ness from bacteria to elephants and everything in between. Just as a pendulum cycles from potential to kinetic and back again in an endless cycle, so too does the biosphere through the seasons.
We are on the upswing. Vivacity is going kinetic all around us, buds bursting forth, seeds sprouting, eggs hatching, new eyes looking out on the world, new awarenesses beginning, the April air filled with fragrance and sound, all of the potential that was hidden suddenly awakening.
We struggle with this, we “modern” humans. It does not fit well with our models of the world. We are used to things that are created, that gradually wear out over some lifespan, and then eventually die. Our buildings. Our machines. Our much-vaunted “progress” is not the improvement of the stuff of life, but rather its replacement with newly created and supposedly-better stuff when it wears out and depreciates. We bring flowers into our home in full bloom and watch them wilt, but we seldom watch them open. The story of our food usually starts with harvest, not with the miraculous process of photosynthesis and growth that precedes it. We celebrate our birth days, as though we instantaneously came into being then and everything since was just a software upgrade. We celebrate similar birth days for our nations, our institutions, our prophets and heroes.
We write creation stories in which the world, the universe, simply pops into existence. Those who have abandoned Genesis now put their faith in the Big Bang. The fossil record tells a different story, one of continuous creation, exploration of niches, infinite cycles from potential to form and back again. We might say we believe that story, but it doesn’t resonate with our collective sensibilities, so we reach for the Big Bang instead.
One of our biggest political battles centers around the question of when, exactly, a developing fetus becomes a human being. Implicit in most of the positions of both sides is that this happens at some moment, as opposed to being a process of becoming, a gradual movement of potential into conscious form.
We understand the ripening, the downswing, the senescence of autumn. We celebrate Hallowe’en, the Day of the Dead, Thanksgiving. But we seldom celebrate the upswing. Beltane, May Day, celebrations of fertility and planting and growth and blossoming are observed by a small minority.
There are cycles within the seasons and from womb to tomb, but both processes – from potential into form and from form into potential – are ongoing at all times. Even in our later years, some of our cells are always renewing, healing, creating and repairing tissues, translating the potential of our DNA into the exquisitely complex chemistry of life.
What if instead of believing we were born on a particular day, we instead believed that we were born into each day, borne onward through the collective experience of time and space? What if we regarded our creation not as an event but as a process – one that will continue throughout and beyond the life of our physical bodies?
Packaged potentialities – the genes and proteins within seeds and sperm and eggs and spores – inform what will come to be in form, but they do not control it. No two Dendroica warblers will fly the same paths, live the same lives. We are - all of us, all of life - weaving the pattern, evolving and exploring our potential through experiences of diving hawks and windstorms, cherry blossoms and winter winds, relationships forged and abandoned and rekindled and lost.
These cycles, from potential to kinetic vivacity and back, have enabled life to persist on Earth for over three billion years. Nothing that we have created with our advanced technologies can match them, instead relying on mines and ships and blast furnaces and clean rooms and layers upon layers of machinery to replicate what biology can accomplish with sunlight and food and packaged potentialities. Perhaps it would be wiser to worship seeds than rockets.
Farmers and gardeners still honor the upswing, marvel at the miracles of tiny seeds becoming, by their own power and volition, lettuce leaves and cornstalks and vining squash and sweet melons and zinnias and snapdragons, of eggs hatching to peeping chicks and calves growing on mother’s milk. Some believe they have industrialized the process, reduced it to inputs and outputs, engineered seeds and animals for maximum yield and uniformity, factories for food. But they have only changed a tiny fraction of the instructions within the packaged potentialities. The upswing, the sacred creative life force, is still there in cornfields and feedlots, constrained and controlled and taken for granted but still springing forth, building leaves, growing beating hearts, capturing sunlight, generating complexity, vivacity going kinetic. It is possible to find this depressing and reassuring at the same time.
In the long white winters of Minnesota the natural world sleeps more deeply, making the April transition more dramatic and leading a younger version of myself to long for spring in icy February winds. Here in Oregon it is more subtle, but I still find that I have a spring in my step in the days of trilliums, of Calypso orchids, of buds bursting and shoots rising and seeds germinating. My own vivacity goes kinetic and I find that I want to sing, to dance, to cavort around campfires. This year, I vow to celebrate Beltane. I vow to ride the current of the upswing, to marvel at the incredible capacity for renewal and growth that exists within everything living, including ourselves.
Beautiful! My Minnesota childhood was in Bloomington, a ginormous suburb of Minneapolis, way back in the 1960s, but yes, winter was grand but spring was always anticipated and enjoyed. It felt like someone flipped a switch, and at long last winter began to slowly slip away.
Your skill with words is much appreciated. Potential to kinetic is a keeper! And your insight into the abortion issue is a breath of fresh air. So many of us seem to need to see everything in black and white...oops! There's another one...
I love this.