#Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

“Im 19. Jahrhundert erfasste die viktorianische Gesellschaft ein Hype nach dem anderen, darunter auch die obsessive Lust am Farn.”

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[biglisbonnews]

By Air, Land, or Sea, Tiny Microbes Transform Our World Excerpted and adapted with permission from Slime: A Natural History, by Susanne Wedlich. Published February 2023 by Melville House. All rights reserved. A haboob is a dust storm. It’s an Arabic word for a phenomenon that struck the American Midwest like a plague of biblical proportions just under a century ago. This storm was not the work of God’s chastising hand, though; it was the worst man-made environmental catastrophe the United States has ever seen. East of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains extend like wide corridors all the way from Mexico to Canada. The land is dry and naturally covered by a community of robust plant life—primarily prairie grasses—whose dense root networks stabilize the soil beneath. But then the humans came. The government knew the plains were not arable land and that, at best, only large farms with complex irrigation systems might be able to make a living there. Little family farms without adequate capital, however, would not be able to survive. Nevertheless, the land was advertised intensively into the 1930s and allocated to settlers free of charge as fertile land requiring little more than a “tickle” with the plow to unleash its productivity. The railways, needing to pay off their newly laid network of tracks, joined in the propaganda for the “Nile of the New World.” In the decades to come, around a third of the Great Plains would be transformed into green grassland and pastures, worked intensively with horse and plow, which disturbed the dense root network of the original plant life. As we now know, essential biological glues were lost. Another of the government’s promises was that the rains would follow the plow, but what actually followed was, in essence, the apocalypse. The exposed earth grew drier and hotter, losing its stability, and became subject to droughts and erosion. This was followed by a rare weather phenomenon, reversing the jet stream which usually carried clouds and rain towards the Midwest. Now the rains stayed away, the harvests withered and vast clouds of dust loomed like a black rock face, kilometers high. In 1933 alone there were more than 50 haboobs, which swept across the landscape. Images from this period show houses and farms submerged as if beneath a gray flood, waves of dust and earth washing as high as their roofs. Contemporary witnesses spoke of fine grains grating against the skin like sandpaper, blinding people, suffocating cattle and leaving children sick with the “brown plague,” a type of pneumonia caused by dust, as described by Timothy Egan in his award-winning book The Worst Hard Time. There was no escape. In the evenings, families sealed their windows and doors with damp towels, yet they would still find themselves shoveling dust out of their homes and cottages come morning. The dust in the air muffled the voices of crowing cockerels and the sun hung blood-red in the sky. By afternoon it would be dark again, and anyone out and about in the dense haze would tie a rope around their middle so as to be able to find their way back. The dust was carried from the Great Plains as far as Chicago, and all the way to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. It left a brown coating even on ships at sea. April 14, 1935, “Black Sunday,” brought the mother of all haboobs, during which, according to Egan, twice the amount of dust went swirling across the country in a single afternoon as had been dug up over seven years to build the Panama Canal. For most farmers, there was no longer a possibility of making a living in the Midwest. The photographer Dorothea Lange became famous for her portraits of careworn and gaunt migrants and their rag-clad children making their way westwards. Like the Joad family in Steinbeck’s masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, they were following another empty promise, that there would be work in the big cities of California and elsewhere, a promise thwarted by the global economic crisis which shook the 1930s. Those who stayed behind had little more luck, as the meager harvests were destroyed by devastating blights and, in any case, the land did not recover from the destruction it had suffered. The consequences are not always so catastrophic when dry soil loses its stability and is exposed to erosion. But even little changes can jeopardize our food supply if they occur on a sufficiently vast scale: if, for example, entire areas of land are exposed to higher temperatures and lower levels of precipitation due to climate change. Most at risk here are the biological soil crusts, ecological communities often unseen or mere millimeters tall which cover the ground in deserts and dry regions, but are also capable of growing on and underneath stones. Where and whether they form depends on precipitation, temperature, and the agricultural use of the land. They are particularly prevalent in deserts, as well as steppes and savannas, especially in southern Africa, Australia, and Asia, and in the American Southwest. They are seldom found in temperate zones, such as those in Central Europe, where vascular plants like shrubs and trees completely cover the ground. According to a study by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, led by Bettina Weber, biological soil crusts cover up to 12 percent of Earth’s surface, corresponding to 40 percent of actual land mass. Biological soil crusts are Earth’s living skin, a protective barrier. Yet they also accumulate and transform nutrients and play a key role in larger biogeochemical processes, such as the global nitrogen and carbon cycles. “Earth’s crusts are dry, hard, and, well, crusty,” says Weber, “but there’s also a certain sliminess.” Cyanobacteria are pioneers of soil crusts, setting things in motion by secreting exopolymers which will build a slimy matrix. It’s sticky enough to glue particles in the soil together, protecting it from erosion. This hydrogel also binds and stores the small amount of water that is present—for example, after rain—before it evaporates or trickles away. Biological soil crusts are complex ecological communities which science categorizes according to their developmental stages. Cyanobacteria are the vanguard, paving the way for other microbes like bacteria, as well as archaea or fungi, which join the young community, doing their part by breaking down organic matter. These might be followed by lichen and mosses, possibly even by worms, slugs, snails, or springtails, and other arthropods as well. It can take years or even decades for a soil crust to become this diverse, potentially boasting many hundreds of different species. However, there are differences between these communities in the crust, not only in regard to the level of maturity they achieve over time, but spatially too: Soil crusts are separated into layers. Strongly pigmented fungi and all photosynthesizing organisms, such as cyanobacteria, generally colonize the top layer because they require and can tolerate UV radiation, while shadier characters live lower down in the ecosystem. They must all be able to survive long periods of drought. Specialists in this area include, for example, the tardigrade, which can enter a state of dormancy before quickly reactivating as soon as water is available. These days, however, biological soil crusts are under threat. According to Weber’s calculations, up to a quarter of this protective coating could soon disappear. Climate change is as much a factor as population growth, which requires the expansion of arable land to include dry and previously unused strips, hitherto covered by biological soil crusts. This development could have consequences across the globe, affecting the nitrogen cycle, among other things. Nitrogen is present in the ground and the atmosphere but cannot be taken up directly by plants. Plants rely on soil microbes which fix nitrogen, making it available for plants to use. Weber has calculated that as much as half of this essential service may be provided by soil crusts. Disturbances to the structure would hit many ecosystems in nutrient-poor regions particularly hard. But the loss of the soil crusts would also expose the ground to intensified erosion by water and wind, enriching the atmosphere with the tiniest of particles. It doesn’t need another dust bowl like that of the Great Plains in the 1930s to pose a risk to human health, and not just for people with allergies and hay fever. The notion of miasmas transmitting fatal infections such as malaria (from mal aria, bad air) has been put to bed. Yet the air around us is filled with microbes, pollen, and other particles which have the potential to cause us harm. The great microbiologist Louis Pasteur was the first to prove that open wounds could be infected with germs from the air. In a sense, this made him the founder of aerobiology, a discipline which witnessed its first and—to date—last golden age in the 1930s, when farmers in the Midwest were facing a global financial crisis, devastating haboobs, and plant pathogens thrown in for good measure. Fred C. Meier of the U.S. Department of Agriculture happened to be the right person in the right place at the right time. A tremendously charismatic man with a pilot’s license, he hoped to discover how the deadly rust fungus—or its spores—was spreading, and to what extent weather and the atmosphere were contributing factors. To this end he recruited American aviation’s shining stars, including Amelia Earhart. She was joined in her aerobiological efforts by a celebrity couple, the Lindberghs. Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering flight across the Atlantic overshadowed his wife’s success somewhat, though Anne Lindbergh was one of the first female pilots in the U.S. and steered the plane on their joint flights as well. In 1933, the couple flew from the U.S., over Greenland, and as far as Denmark. As discussed with Meier beforehand, they used “sky hooks” as airborne traps. Charles had constructed them himself out of a metal cylinder containing oily, sticky glass slides which would catch solid particles in the air. In fact, a kilometer above Greenland they found spores of exactly the same rust and other fungi that were growing on the ground thousands of miles away, causing vast agricultural damage. The findings were clear: These spores were nomads that traveled by air, high up in the planet’s atmosphere. And they were not alone: The Lindberghs also collected grains of pollen, fragments of fungal mycelium, single-celled algae like diatoms, insect wings, volcanic ash, and glass particles in their sealed traps. Like the microbes of the deep biosphere in Earth’s crust, other bacteria and spores define the limits of life high beyond the clouds. The living inhabitants of the air, which drift with the wind and cannot fly themselves, are sometimes referred to as aeroplankton, inspired by the ecological communities which float through the oceans. We already know, to some extent, where these airborne microbes come from, or at least where their journey begins. They can find their way from the ocean into the atmosphere when air bubbles rise through the water and burst at its gel-like surface, which is densely populated by microbes. Even the leaves of plants can be a starting point for propelling matter into the air. Many pathogens that affect humans are transmitted via the air we breathe, or via coughs and sneezes, as the coronavirus pandemic has taught us all too well. This is known as droplet transmission. Lydia Bourouiba at MIT demonstrated that plants spread pathogens in a similar way, with fungi, for example, traveling via spattering droplets of rain. They cover themselves in a slimy coat of mucilage, which protects them and prevents them from being carried high up into the air on the wind. If a raindrop strikes an affected leaf, the water splashes off, carrying the pathogen with it, maybe to its next host. Pseudomonas syringae is an economically devastating pathogen, infecting hundreds of plant species, which also specializes in life in the air. This bacterium is present across the world, including in water, but can also survive for several days in the atmosphere, where it is thought to live on fragments of plant matter swept up into the air. Spanish researchers have shown that microbes can travel ensconced in atmospheric dust, even between continents. Their vehicles of choice are iberulites: dust particles made from different minerals that reach considerable size and are glued together by bacterial slime. These kinds of aggregates from mineral and biological components occur all over the world. The ones that were studied in detail this time were found in the city of Granada but held dust grains and microbes from the Sahara. In the atmosphere they had been caught in a water droplet as a bioaerosol and had then taken on the characteristic shape of iberulites, a little like a dented cannonball. Some strains of P. syringae, however, produce a protein that causes water to freeze at unusually high temperatures. Like other microbes and particles, this bacterium acts as a crystallization point for ice formation. One hypothesis is that P. syringae may be able to return to the ground inside a self-made hailstone or snowflake when conditions at altitude become too uncomfortable. Thanks to its freezing proteins, a harmless version of the pathogen is also used to make artificial snow. A harmless version of the pathogen is also used to make artificial snow. Soils, and especially their biological crusts, are closely tied to aeroplankton, too. And they’re equally threatened by disruption through climate change. The expansion of agriculture is another danger, and even smaller damage can have lasting effects. Shoes, hooves, and tires are capable of destroying these fragile biocrusts, which may take decades to regenerate—if they ever get a chance. To lose them would mean losing what were probably evolution’s first ecological communities. Not only do they occur on all continents and in all climatic zones, but they were probably the first ecosystems to venture onto dry land, forming along the edges of bodies of water before moving further inland. They still play a vital role in shaping the habitat of many other organisms, by fixing nitrogen and binding carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They are also important for weathering processes, breaking down mineral underlayers. Since the cyanobacterias’ slimy matrix stores the little water there is, the soil-crust community and higher plants benefit, even on grazing land. Sometimes, however, less is more. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places on Earth. Very few bacteria, algae, fungi, and lichen are able to survive here, in the soil crusts or as part of the soil microbiota. When the first rainstorms for decades made their way across this region in 2017—a consequence of climate change—it seemed that the born survivors which inhabit this area would finally be granted a well-deserved embarrassment of liquid riches. In fact, the episode culminated in a microbial massacre as the unprecedented excess of water caused the organisms to burst. Of the microbes which normally occur in and on top of the soil in Atacama, only a handful of species survived. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/aeroplankton-soil-crust-microbes

[aangussca]

Art Studio 1 Research: Biology of Slime (IDEA 2) PART 1

Properties of slime

Most slimes in organisms are aqueous hydrogels. However, not all slimes are hydrogels and not all hydrogels are slimy.

Aqueous hydrogels = substances where water trapped in a 3D polymer network.

Therefore, it is important to know that the primary characteristic of slimes is:

Viscoelasticity: the quality of having both viscosity and elasticity, "uniting the properties of liquids and solids" and enabling it to change its properties (Wedlich, 2022).

This gives slime its many functions in living organisms: lubricants, adhesives, protection (e.g. acting as a 'semi-permeable membrane' to filter out particles, and catching pathogens), communication, self-defence (physical or chemical), dispersal of reproductive material, etc. The slimes in living organisms contain glycoproteins such as mucins.

Why is slime so important for life (including in humans)?

As alluded to previously, slime has a number of different purposes. These purposes include:

Adhesion (for movement or catching food)

Lubrication (for movement)

Protection and self-defence

Dispersal

Adhesion and lubrication:

Movement of gastropods (sea slugs, land/cone snails, etc.): Two purposes of gastropod mucus are adhesion for climbing up vertical surfaces and to prevent being blown away by powerful wind/water currents, and lubrication to move across surfaces with ease.

Mucus in the digestive tract (oesophagus and intestines): Facilitates movement of food through the gut.

Mucus in creatures such as pelagic snails ('slime nets') and sundew plants (mucilage): Helps to collect food (adhesion).

Protection and self-defence:

Mucus in the respiratory tract: Filters and collects pathogens and other debris, which is carried out the lungs.

Mucus in the stomach: Protects the inner lining from acid.

Parrotfish and hagfish: Both use mucus to protect themselves from predators - the parrotfish to 'hide' its scent from predators while it sleeps and the hagfish to clog the throat/gills of a predator so it can escape.

Mucus on certain nudibranchs: Protects their bodies from the stings of some of the anemone/jellyfish nematocysts they eat.

Mucus on various amphibious/aquatic creatures (frogs, cephalopods, etc.): Prevent their skin drying out, and in some species to facilitate additional gas exchange through the skin (frogs and squid).

Dispersal:

Mistletoe berries: Sticky, viscous flesh that carry the seeds, which are excreted by the birds that eat them (they are also toxic to humans and most other animals = additional function of self-defence).

Stinkhorn fungi: Gleba, a gelatinous, sticky substance covering the fruiting body of the fungus, carries the spores needed to reproduce - insects like flies eat the gleba and help distribute the spores now attached to their bodies.

It has also been found that not only are gelatinous/'slimy' organisms integral parts of the marine food web (siphonophores (predators) and jellyfish (predators/prey)), but there have been theories that the earliest organisms may have originated from a 'primordial slime'.

Why slime and disgust?

Throughout the history of literature and other media (particularly horror and/or science fiction), slime/mucus has been depicted as 'disgusting', 'alien' or 'monstrous' rather than a natural (and integral) part of biology. Examples of such portrayals include H.P Lovecraft's At the Mountain of Madness (1931) and the 1988 film The Blob.

As Susanne Wedlich details in the book Slime: A Natural History, this perception was grounded in many social and political biases/prejudices throughout history (as shown in historical writings):

The vilification of various marginalised groups: In this case, particularly women and LGBTQ+ people (however, works like The Blob were inspired by global tensions and political panic during the Cold War).

The fear of death, disease and decomposition: This stems from the fear of confronting our own mortality.

The perception of anything biological (particularly in women/AFAB people) as 'taboo': For example, sexuality as 'animalistic', childbirth as 'grotesque' and menopause/ageing as 'undesirable/ugly'.

Martha C. Nussbaum reinforces this notion in her 2018 opinion piece: "Human beings are probably hard-wired to find signs of their mortality and animality disgusting, and to shrink from contamination by bodily fluids and blood. But in every culture something worse kicks in: the projection of these feared and loathed characteristics... onto a vulnerable group or groups from whom the dominant group wishes to distance itself [from]."

Wedlich also presents instances where people (especially women) in history reclaimed 'slime' (and anything else in their biology that was seen as disgusting) as a form of empowerment. For example, American writer Patricia Highsmith loved observing and breeding/keeping snails, even going on several trips to smuggle them across the French border when she moved from London. Fiona Peters (Professor of crime fiction) argues that snails were present as themes within Highsmith's works: "transgressive feminine sexuality", identity ('the self and the other'), and sapphic*/lesbian relationships (Highsmith was a lesbian herself).

(*NOTE: 'Sapphic' refers to women/gender-diverse people who are attracted to women. While 'lesbian' (women/gender-diverse people primarily or exclusively attracted to women) does align with the umbrella definition of 'sapphic', so do other sexualities like 'bisexual' (attraction to two or more genders, with or without a preference) and 'pansexual' (attraction to people regardless of gender).)

There is also media that directly subvert the 'slime = disgust' trope. On one hand, some works may portray mucus as a beautiful, mysterious part of the landscape (the gelatinous 'alien ocean' in Stanisław Lem's Solaris (1961)). Others may use it as a basis for empathy towards historically-marginalised groups, and for criticising the discrimination/exploitation of these groups (the titular creatures in Karel Čapek's War with the Newts (1936)).

While many perceptions of historically-marginalised groups have changed since then, the association of slime with disgust still persists. In his article Corporeality, hyper-consciousness, and the Anthropocene ecoGothic: slime and ecophobia, Simon C. Estok discusses the following term in relation to slime and disgust:

Ecophobia: The fear, aversion or ethical dismissal/devaluing of the natural world, its importance, and the issues that impact it.

With this in mind, you could argue that disgust towards slime/mucus as a whole (even without the social biases) may be considered a form of biophobia.

Biophobia: The fear/aversion towards anything biological (living organisms, one's internal biology, etc.), typically stemming from a disconnect with nature.

Below is a TED Talk by David Pizarro. While the methodology of the study discussed (its accuracy and potential bias) is debated, it does further explain the connections between societal/political perceptions and the disgust response.

Interesting note: Dualities

In my research, multiple dualities have been observed here:

Beauty and disgust

Appreciation and repulsion

Familiar and 'alien'

Tangible and abstract

Understood and unexplained

Health and sickness

Open-minded and closed-minded

The comfortable and the 'abject'

Self and other

Us and them

Compassion and hostility

Life and death

Natural and 'unnatural'

Acceptable and taboo

Perhaps a few of those can be the basis of my work.

References

Bansil, Rama, and Bradley S. Turner. “The Biology of Mucus: Composition, synthesis and organisation.” Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 124, no. 1 (January 2018): 3-15.

Brownworth, Victoria A. “Patricia Highsmith: A Lesbian Life in Diaries.” Philadelphia Gay News. Published December 9, 2021. https://epgn.com/2021/12/09/patricia-highsmith-a-lesbian-life-in-diaries/

Estok, Simon C. “Corporeality, hyper‐consciousness, and the Anthropocene ecoGothic: slime and ecophobia.” Neohelicon (Budapest) 47, no. 1 (June 2020): 27-36.

McShane, Abigail, Jade Bath, Ana M. Jaramillo, Caroline Ridley, Agnes A. Walsh, Christopher M. Evans, David J. Thornton, and Katharina Ribbeck. “Mucus.” Current Biology 31, no. 15 (August 2021): 1-7.

Greenwood, Paul G., Kyle Garry, April Hunter, and Miranda Jennings. “Adaptable Defense: A Nudibranch Mucus Inhibits Nematocyst Discharge and Changes With Prey Type.” The Biological Bulletin 206, no. 2 (April 2004): 113-120.

TED Ed. “The Strange Politics of Disgust - David Pizarro.” Published April 9, 2013. YouTube video, 14:02. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqX9zMuKENc

Wedlich, Susanne. Slime: A Natural History. London: Granta Books, 2022.

Ze Frank. “True Facts: Stinkhorns.” Published November 21, 2019. YouTube video, 3:38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADrBo7u3tR4

[digital-meat]

Reading Das Book von Schliem by Susanne Wedlich.

"A new equilibrium in a warmer world might also favor slime in some habitats, allowing it to return to dominance. It would be a step back into an early era of evolution, a new era of slime."

FUCK YEAH

"Chapter 1: Eldritch Horror"

i am in love

[anarcho-sin-dicalist]

Is it just me or is this book about slime dangerously horny?

(Slime: a Natural History by Susanne Wedlich)

[sommerlyrik]

“Evolution und Energie waren die beiden prägenden Ideen der Wissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts und in dessen letzten Dekaden wurden sie über den Zellschleim miteinander verknüpft.”

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

“Alle Mehrzeller sind von einem dichten Mikrobiom besiedelt und werden so intensiv von ihm geprägt, dass es kaum mehr sinnvoll scheint, von individuellen Organismen zu sprechen. Wir bilden eine untrennbar eing verzahnte Gemeinschaft mit unseren Mikroben, von denen mindestens eine auf jede menschliche Körperzelle kommt. Wir sind Holobionten.” (99) “So eing ist die Kooperation, dass sich kaum mehr klären lässt, ob wir die Mikroben siedeln lassen oder ob sich die Mikroben einen Mehrzeller halten.” (101) “Das Mikrobiom ist unermüdlich und flexibel für den gemeinsamen Organismus im Dienst. Warum aber leisten wir diese Aufgabe nicht selbst? Einer Theorie zufolge waren frühe Mehrzeller möglicherweise von den steigenden Anforderungen ihrer komplexen Körper überfordert. In der Verdauung etwa hätten sie sich demnach auf das Outsourcing einzelner Aufgaben an Mikroben verlegt, denen sie im Gegenzug die Oberflächen unserer Organismen als Lebensraum anboten, Unterkunft, Schutz und Versorgung also. Wenn es denn eine Wahl gab: Die ersten Tiere fanden sich in einer Welt wieder, in der Bakterien seit drei Milliarden Jahren dominant waren. Sie waren ein zentraler Bestandteil unserer Umwelt und nutzten die mehrzelligen Newcomer sicher als willkommene Habitate, wenn sie nicht sogar den Startschuss für unsere Entwicklung gaben.” (106)

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

“Auch Schleim hätte als weitgehend unverdienter Unsympath einen derart nuancierten und für den jeweiligen Bedarf mal mehr oder weniger vorsichtigen Umgang verdient. Stattdessen reagiert hier meist reflexhafte Abwehr. … Doch Komplexität lässt sich ohne präzise Worte und eindeutige Definitionen sowie Abgrenzungen kaum vermitteln. Es fehlt am Vokabular. Die Alltagssprache kennt nur “Schleim” als vorwiegend negativ besetzten Ausdruck. Wertfreie Begriffe gibt es nicht, vom “Wohlfühl-Glibber” - entsprechend den Düften unter den Gerüchen - ganz zu schweigen.”

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

“Ekel ist eine der grundlegenden Emotionen und extrem elastisch, kann auf unliebsame Substanzen ebenso stark reagieren wie auf Verhaltensweisen, Ideen und sogar Worte - kurz: jede Art von Grenzüberschreitung. Die Auswahl scheint für fremde Augen oft willkürlich, ein Hauch von Lokalkolorit umweht unsere Aversionen.” (39) “Ekel ist also essenziell, hat aber einen toten Winkel: Wie soll er vor Krankheitsherden warnen, wenn wir die Mikroben mit keinem unserer Sinne wahrnehmen können? Unser Abscheu-Frühwarnszstem muss deshalb auf häufige Begleiterscheinungen von Infektionsquellen ausweichen, gewissermaßen auf den kleinsten gemeinsamen Nenner reagieren. Was aber teilen die breit gestreuten Gefährdungen rund um Krankheit, Sex, Tod und Fäulnis? Natürlich: Schleim. Er ist ein Phänomen, das häufig eng mit Mikroben assoziiert ist und sich als Ekelauslöser anbeitet, weil er mehrere Sinne gleichzeitig anspricht. Infektionsquellen lassen sich mit seiner Hilfe schnell entlarven, weil er auf einen Blick erkannt und mit einer Berührung ertastet werden kann.” (41-42) “Der Ekel vor Schleim ist kein ehernes Gesetz und darf es auch nicht sein. Absolute Aversionen lähmen und lassen das Verhalten erstarren. … Das weiß die Natur zu verhindern, die die Ekelschwelle justieren kann. So wird verdächtige Nahrung immer appetitlicher, je verzweifelter der Hunger nagt. Die Ekelschwelle steigt aber auch mit der sexuellen Erregung an, sodass Speichel, Sperma und andere Fluide des fremden Körpers gar nicht mehr so abstoßend erscheinen. … Unsere Emotion Ekel hat also eine Stellschraube, die sich dem aktuellen Bedarf anpasst. Und der Mode.” (42)

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

“Unsere Grenzen sind also … fließend - und von Schleim markiert. Er ist das Material des Übergangs von Gesundheit zu Krankheit oder lässt sich im Leiden vielleicht nur weniger leicht ignorieren. Er ist die Grenze zwischen Ich und Du beim Sex und hier vorübergehend sogar erwünscht für reibungslosen Kontakt. Und er repräsentiert auch die letzte Grenze zwischen dem Leben under finalen Verschleimung im Tod, wenn dem Körper in der Auflösung jede Definition abhandenkommt. Aller äußerlichen Ähnlichkeit zum Trotz ist Schleim hier aber nicht gleich Schleim: Während die Schleime von Lebewesen extrem komplex und vielseitig sind, steht der Schleim des Verfalls für einen Verlust an Ordnung. Er ist ein Abfallprodukt.”

“Wenn wir also Schleim aus unserem Bewusstsein verdrängen, können wir vielleicht auch unsere biologische Endlichkeit ignorieren - oder es zumindest versuchen.”

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

“Im alten Ägypten galten Schlamm und Schleim als Lebensspender und die Idee der Spontanzeugung von Insekten und anderem Getier wurde über die Lehren des Aristoteles fast bis in unsere Zeit getragen. Auftrieb bekam sie, als Charles Darwins Evolutionstheorie biblische Vorstellungen von der Entstehung der Natur überwarf. Ein Urschleim am Boden der Meere sollte stattdessen das Leben auf die Erde gebracht haben. Das behauptete der prominente Evolutionsbiologe Ernst Haeckel und hatte nicht ganz unrecht: Von Beginn des Lebens an und über weite Strecken der Evolution regierte ein Art mikrobieller Urschleim auf der Erde, wenn auch nicht die von Haeckel propagierte Variante, die dennoch die frühe Evolutionsbiologie in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderst für kurze Zeit elekrisierte.”

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

Schleim “ist wandelhaft in seinem Verhalten, er ist das Material der Grenzflächen oder Interfaces und er besetzt eine einzigartige Position in unserer Imagination. Wer ihn erstmals bewusst und in all seinen Ausformungen ins Auge fasst, sieht eine andere als die altbekannte Welt.”

Das Buch vom Schleim, Susanne Wedlich

[sommerlyrik]

26-29/60 Days of Productivity (because I got shit to do before September) | 1-4/08/24

Finished Slime - A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. Slime is sooo well designed, when I have time I need to take some pictures of the internal illustrations! I love a good color scheme. (The drink is a pistachio latte, which is slightly green, too, but it doesn't come across on the pictures.)

I was glad having read both of these books roughly at the same time, they go together quite well.

[sommerlyrik]

18/60 Days of Productivity (because I got shit to do before September) | 22/07/24

At this rate I will not be done with the things before September, strictly, but anything early in September should not be too bad, truly. Also, come next month I'll have much more time to focus on academic work!

On this particular day I got a text in the morning whether I could cover a colleague's shift that night, which means my day of inspirational coffee shop hopping was cut short to force myself to sleep/doze in the afternoon and evening.

💪:

Some important emails (so much of my productivity lately is mainly backstage things like ... thinking. emailing. pondering. bureaucracy. oof!)

For the article: made progress with Slime - A Natural History (Susanne Wedlich) and “Commodified Evil’s Wayward Children” (Jason Forster)

✨:

Reading for fun (pictured). So far it is nice, but also very much German Literary Fiction Written By a Straight Man, which obviously is much different to German literary fiction written by a straight man and which encapsulates some of my favorite books.

Wir sucken dick. Heehee.

Practiced chess & go.