The tale of the paramecium who lived happily ever after

Early on in my childhood I decided I needed to study science so I could prove what I was thinking was true. I have always been curious to find answers with reasonable explanations. For example, it seemed reasonable that Moses was able to part the Red Sea because he was educated and knew about tides. I reasoned that Jesus turned water into wine by diluting it. I was always drawn to explain myths. That is not to say I do not believe in miracles. I have seen them happen. Within my realm of thought, it is not impossible to believe that a gut feeling is attuned to cosmic elements, and results in rare, unexplained serendipitous events.

As a youth, questioning got me into trouble. When I noted that the continents appeared to have once been connected, the teacher was told that idea was nonsense. I now understand that the poor dear was functioning to the best of her abilities with 38 students in front of her. Sticking to the party line, while teaching something beyond her understanding, was the sole means of survival. The idea of continental drift was not accepted until the late 1960's.

Such a response to my ideas made me turn to writing. It was my way of putting down my thoughts, without being considered confrontational, or being laughed at. I pursued putting down my thoughts and images in journals that I have kept over the years, Strangely, I seem to know how to find what I wrote over 50 years ago. This is what I consider my first story, written around age 16, after I had recently learned about paramecium, single celled life forms. In my mind’s eye, I saw how more complex life began.

Here is the chicken scratch of my first creative work that tried to describe what I considered was a revolutionary concept, that I was bound and determined to eventually prove. In this story I explained how the paramecium would constantly change, and if alone and cold, would convolute into itself. It hid under a clam shell and was safe but still influenced by the current. However, living in the darkness of the shell was not all that the paramecium wanted. The paramecium chose to leave isolation.

As I look back at this piece, I see my struggle to compile what I was learning, thinking, and experiencing, to explain how multicellular organisms started. They were caught in a net and then thrown apart. Naturally they hid, one under a rock and the other in a clam.

I had a fundamental understanding of how complexity in animals began, and even predicted how mitochondria have their own DNA. I intuitively understood that animals came before plants, and that single celled microorganisms formed chlorophyll. The endosymbiotic theory of chloroplast formation from cyanobacteria-like organism was established in the late 70's after Lynn Margulis seminal paper on the endosymbiotic hypothesis.

I was part of the current of thought in the emerging state of science. I followed what was in the air. It has led to the awareness of endosymbiosis that is fundamental to recent studies on epigenetics that control DNA expression. This is the basis of current research on physiological differences from traumas that are associated with cellular memories. My story elucidated that connections occur without thought, or even life. Connections continue after death.The paramecium became dispersed, but pieces embedded within a pearl and with pieces of another paramecium then dispersed again.

Ah, the eternal optimist, but the story did not end there. The influence of Zen and my tendencies toward fantasy were raging. I remember feeling that this must be true, but at this stage in my life, darned if I could find anyone who would agree. After all, this type of conjecture seems like a wild child's imagination, and I embraced it.

My thoughts felt so radical, and unaccepted by anyone I knew at the time. I felt I could only ever dream of writing them as fictional child stories.

Looking back over this piece makes me realize that as a kid, I loved that science allowed me to try to explain the amazing aspects of nature. I remember experimenting with a magnifying glass, playing with mercury from broken thermometers on the stairs, watching the marvels of a slinky, and purchasing a transistor at Canadian tire, attaching it between my lawn chair and the door handle, then to a mercury filling on my tooth and making music come out of my mouth. Watching 'Professors hide-away' on television around 1961, and seeing him in a glass bubble at the CNE was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I had to be pulled away and sat down in the back of the station wagon with my two brothers, sister, and cousin to drive one hour back home.

The world was different. As a child I decided to pursue my calling, wanting to write what I 'knew was real', from a scientific point of view. I have learned that despite of its limits, science offers a means to objectively observe what the eye cannot process because of its limits. Writing this little tale was my way of providing proof to myself, that I could find probable answers to questions. I learned that often people say an idea is wrong or silly because they do not want to accept the possibility of an answer that extends beyond their ability to understand.

I have come to trust my ability to pick out ideas that are in the air, and test if they hold merit. They have led to me to be prepared to observe and recognize uncanny, unlikely but possible and even probable future scenarios. In the late 1970’s, I remember going to the University of Toronto library, thermos of coffee and pen and paper in hand, after watching John Travolta play a young boy living in a bubble. I was ready to research all information on severe combined immunodeficiency. I think I stopped at 100 references and came up with some solutions. A year or so later when the similar disease Aids, was discovered, my ideas were consistent with those eventually used for treatment.

During this same period, I chose to write a paper on the use of insect as a protein source, compared protein in hamburger and dog food, and explored the phenomenon of sex change in fish. Later, as a teacher, between 1980- 2009, when astronomy became a mandatory unit to teach, I was delighted in coming up with a list of topics for students to research such as the incidence of hurricanes and earthquakes over the last 20 years, the effects of the reversal of the poles, the effect of solar flares on ionization in the van Allen belt and consequent effects on radio transmission, the phi ratio of the orbitals of planets, and elementary forces that lead to the formation of matter. These topics have become the fodder of many economic developments used in marketing and science fiction movies.

I give myself a pat on the back for being drawn to explore a natural part of the human experience and keeping a record of my thoughts. Documenting my thoughts has let me see that I have been listening to the messages of the gut microbes. I discovered the scientific method of making a null hypothesis, and testing it is a natural reasonable way to know what you know.

This first tale about microbes, has let me see how my thoughts can be traced along a crumb trail that connects time and space. Documenting my imagination, and gut feelings, makes me realize how questioning has allowed me to experience serendipitous opportunities, that extend beyond my wildest imagination. I have enjoyed coming out from out from under the rock and becoming part of the string of Indra’s pearls of wisdom. I have honoured my ideas, that are just in the air. They are always there. Individuals choose which ones to grab onto. Barriers between ideas dissolve, and disperse, creating the conditions for diffusion to occur. Diffusion is a powerful, non-active force that works by creating a gradient that compels profound changes to naturally occur. Diffusion is essential to making unexplainable miraculous events happen.