excerpt

...the contractions of childbirth, the flutterings of the eyelids, every breath, what intelligence informs these actions? Abdominal waves perfectly timed and tuned for the health and well-being of both mother and child, a fold of skin twitching to lubricate a delicate cornea, alveoli snatching molecules from the eternal wind and quickly handing them off to blood cells flowing by, how do they do it, how do they know? You do not tell your parts how to dance their dance. Instead it is they who teach you what it means to be alive, to animate a body built of the same elements of earth and sky as every other living being, the same gas and minerals and sugar that add up to each of us and to every oak tree and every insect buzzing past. Life builds its factories and engines and pumps for itself, and it keeps them going without your guidance. Life, not thought, sustains life. Thought observes. Thought wonders how life knows everything it knows. Thought reacts to life and tries to put it all together. Thought fails. Thought sleeps. Thought dreams.