Among Slime Molds

The site of the soul is the verb, not the subject. We, as passers-by, drift briefly through the predicate. And it ensouls us as we go.

When deciding, we are decisioned. When passing, we are passed by “to pass.” When writing, we are written by “to write.” No souls but predicates inhabit us, actors as we go. We are these and they are we, foragers in a grammar that enacts us.

In the light of Lucy shines a new insight of paleo-hamartiology. We were brought down not by Eve but by crazed and weaponized primates. To adapt from de Voragine, Lucy is said of light, and light is blood in beholding. The nature of slaughter is such, she is vicious in beholding, she spreadeth over all without Iying down, she passeth in going right without crooking by right long line; and it is without dilation of tarrying.

“It is profound. We can now picture Lucy walking around the east African landscape with a stone tool in her hand scavenging and butchering meat,” said colleague Shannon McPheron.

Ape With a Knife Changes Human History,” Newser, August 12, 2010

Scientists have discovered evidence of the use of stone tools to eat meat 3.4 million years ago – 800,000 years earlier than previously thought. The find means that our first ancestor to use tools was not Homo “the handy man” Hablis but Australopithecus afarensis, the half ape, half human, nicknamed “Lucy” when her skeleton was found in 1976.

Hail Lucy! – the new Queen of the Stone Age,” The Telegraph, August 11, 2010