10.26.2026 – if there is magic

if there is magic
here on this planet, it is
contained in water

Adapted for this passage in the book, The Immense Journey by Loren C. Eiseley (Random House: New York, 1957) where Mr. Eiseley writes:

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

Its least stir even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window.

A wind ripple may be translating itself into life.

I have a constant feeling that some time I may witness that momentous miracle on a city roof, see life veritably and suddenly boiling out of a heap of rusted pipes and old television aerials.

I marvel at how suddenly a water beetle has come and is submarining there in a spatter of green algae.

Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are an alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking.

Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh.

Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.

The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and movings that stir inanimate things.

Like the charmed fairy circle into which a man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that a whole century had passed in a single night, one can never quite define this secret ; but it has something to do, I am sure, with common water.

Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air.

It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Eisely was a “scholar and writer of imagination and grace,” whose reputation and accomplishments extended far beyond the campus where he taught for 30 years.

Wikipedia states:

Loren Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was a fellow of multiple professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

His first book, The Immense Journey, was a collection of writings about the history of humanity, and it proved to be that rare science book that appealed to a mass audience. It has sold over a million copies and has been published in at least 16 languages. Besides being his first book, The Immense Journey was also Eiseley’s most well known book and established him as a writer with the ability to combine science and humanity in a poetic way. This book was originally published in 1946. Then, it was published again in 1957, a few years after the Piltdown Man hoax discovery.

In the book, Eiseley conveys his sense of wonder at the depth of time and the vastness of the universe. He uses his own experiences, reactions to the paleontological record, and wonderment at the world to address the topic of evolution. More specifically, the text concentrates on human evolution and human ignorance. In The Immense Journey, Eiseley follows the journey from human ignorance at the beginning of life to his own wonderment about the future of mankind.