{"id":214630,"date":"2022-06-06T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=214630"},"modified":"2022-06-06T04:31:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T03:31:00","slug":"the-age-of-the-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/06\/the-age-of-the-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"The Age of the Possible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There,<br \/>\nat the bottom of being,<br \/>\nwhere the water that makes<br \/>\nthis planet a world<br \/>\nis the color of spacetime<\/p>\n<p>the octopus \u2014<\/p>\n<p>with her body-shaped mind<br \/>\nand her eight-arm embrace<br \/>\nof alien realities,<br \/>\nwith her colorblind vision<br \/>\nsightful of polarized light<br \/>\nand her perpetually awestruck<br \/>\nlidless eye \u2014<\/p>\n<p>can see<\/p>\n<p>shades of blue we cannot conceive.<\/p>\n<p>Call it god<br \/>\nif you must<br \/>\nlean on the homely<br \/>\nto fathom the holiness<br \/>\nof the fathomless whole.<\/p>\n<p>And meanwhile,<br \/>\nup here,<br \/>\nwe swim amid particles<br \/>\nwe cannot perceive<br \/>\nfolded into dimensions<br \/>\nwe cannot imagine<\/p>\n<p>to tell stories about<br \/>\nwhat is real and<br \/>\nwhat is possible,<br \/>\nand what it means to be.<\/p>\n<p>A blink of time ago<br \/>\nwe thought the octopus<br \/>\nimpossible,<br \/>\nwe thought this blue world<br \/>\nlifeless<br \/>\nbelow three hundred fathoms<br \/>\nuntil <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/themarginalian.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&amp;id=7ed9384fc8&amp;e=52f96bd8dd\"  data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?hl=en&amp;q=https:\/\/themarginalian.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D7ed9384fc8%26e%3D52f96bd8dd&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1654572151372000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3v6mGDjtSJ_OxiFsbYU3J_\">in 1898<\/a> \u2014<br \/>\nan epoch after Bach<br \/>\nscribbled in the margin<br \/>\nof a composition<br \/>\n\u201cEverything that is possible is real\u201d \u2014<br \/>\nwe plunged our prosthetic eye<br \/>\ndeep into the blue<br \/>\nand found a universe of life.<\/p>\n<p>There,<br \/>\nthe octopus,<br \/>\ngodless and possible,<br \/>\nlives.<\/p>\n<p>Are any of her three hearts breaking<br \/>\nfor us<br \/>\nand our impossible blues?<\/p>\n<p><em>_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/maria-popova.gif\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-106597\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/maria-popova.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a> \u00a0 <em>My name is <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2021\/10\/22\/brain-pickings-becoming-the-marginalian\/\" >Maria Popova<\/a> \u2014 a reader, a wonderer, and a lover of reality who makes sense of the world and herself through the essential inner dialogue that is the act of writing. <\/em><em>The Marginalian<\/em><em> (which <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2021\/10\/22\/brain-pickings-becoming-the-marginalian\" >bore the unbearable name Brain Pickings<\/a> for its first 15 years) is my one-woman labor of love, exploring what it means to live a decent, inspired, substantive life of purpose and gladness. Founded in 2006 as a weekly email to seven friends, eventually brought online and now included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive, it is a record of my own becoming as a person \u2014 intellectually, creatively, spiritually, poetically \u2014 drawn from my extended marginalia on the search for meaning across literature, science, art, philosophy, and the various other tendrils of human thought and feeling. A private inquiry irradiated by the ultimate question, the great quickening of wonderment that binds us all: What <\/em><em>is<\/em><em> all this? (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/about\/\" >More<\/a>\u2026) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There,<br \/>\nat the bottom of being,<br \/>\nwhere the water that makes<br \/>\n    this planet a world<br \/>\n        is the color of spacetime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[868],"class_list":["post-214630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}