Funny, too, that Foundation and Earth, at 492 pages, is nearly as long as the original trilogy (589 pages)...but I'm already feeling like it just isn't long enough.I guess I'm fortunate that I only read a couple of pages a day, as that means it will probably take me a few months to finish it off.
ANYway...today I read a line which made my brain vibrate like a struck tuning fork. Bliss, a character from the planet Gaia, is talking about how she is so connected to her planet that she and everything on Gaia (vegetable, animal, and mineral) are essentially one organism. And here's what she has to say about eating:
"Whatever I eat on Gaia is Gaia and when much of it is metabolized and becomes me, it is still Gaia. In fact, by the fact that I eat, some of what I eat has a chance to participate in a higher intensity of consciousness, while, of course, other portions of it are turned into waste of one sort or another and therefor sink in the scale of consciousness."
Well...there's a lot to be said about that, I think...including how it relates to Buddhism and the J. D. Salinger short story "Teddy," but the first connection it made for me was to Waiting for Godot. Which isn't surprising, I suppose, in that for me, many things connect to Waiting for Godot, but in this case it went to the heart of a matter which was very important to me.
Short Version: My theory is that Waiting for Godot is, on one level (and it has many, many levels), about the four Greek elements (γῆ gê, ὕδωρ, ἀήρ aḗr), and πῦρ pŷ) and how there is a movement, an evolution, from one to the other. I understand how that worked in the positive sense...how the lower would seek the higher...but didn't really get why the higher would then become the lower. But that's because I wasn't thinking of it in the context of consumption. When you consume, waste is produced. Badda bing badda bay...the lower form re-emerges.
So thanks, Isaac. I needed that.
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