EDITOR'S CORNER Kayo Robertson
Sep 18
4 min read
Updated: Sep 24
Illustration Kayo Robertson
THE FEEL OF AIR
The air we breathe. This air ocean in which we swim.
Does it come as a wind?
What sounds does it carry as it plays upon the harps of stone,
the woodwind branches and leaves of trees?
The sound of rain hitting dry earth?
How many vowels do you hear in the song of moving air?
Does it carry the booming drum rolls of thunder and flash with lightning?
Or is the air still, quiet and expectant,
as if for a moment the world had ceased its busy turnings?
Is the air hard or gentle? Dry or moist? Thin or thick? What does it taste like?
Sage after a rain? Fresh cut Alfalfa? Springtime leaves? Summer flowers?
The dry grasses of Autumn? The frosty bite of a winter's morning?
Did it carry the smell of salt from a nearby ocean?
Did it wrap you like a familiar flannel blanket,
soft and heavy like the air before an oncoming storm?
What is the air doing to us as it fills our lungs,
courses through our veins
and feeds the fire in our belly turning food into energy?
Life into life.
Does it cause us to awaken... or beckon us to slumber...?
A BREATH CALLED PHOTOSYNTHESIS
H2O + 6CO2 energized by sunlight = C6H12O6 + 6O2
water + carbon dioxide + sunlight = sugar + oxygen
This is the most important
chemical equation in the world.
It defines gather and release,
taking and giving,
filling and emptying.
Using the power of solar energy,
plants combine water and carbon dioxide gas
and create the building blocks
of organic life: sugar and oxygen.
This equation is the scientific poetry
of the shared breath that connects
the green world of plants and the world of the animals.
It is the mathematics of renewal.
The equation is simple but wonder-filled.
A planet made of stardust.
Life made of sugar.
Who would have guessed?
SPIRIT BREATH
Humans have always had gods.
Earth Gods. Sky Gods. The Kiva. The Church Spire.
Gods between Earth and Sky.
The Taiji Heaven - Man - Earth
On Earth as it is in Heaven
Matthew 6:10
All these Human icons of light and spirit, that which is Divine, Sacred, or Whole revolve around one thing: Breath. The very word air comes from the Greek word meaning breath or wind. Heaven comes from the word sky. Sky, that firmament, that vaulted dome that holds the Sun, Moon and Stars. The Latin root for spirit comes from breath or wind.
Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Old Testament, Genesis 2:7 and Koran 32:9
Prana from India and Chi (Qi) from China and Pneuma from the Greek (spirit) also mean breath. The life force. The spirit of vitality. In Buddhism mindful breathing is looked upon as the very essence of wisdom.
Mind is like the sky
Passing clouds distractions.
Sky does not push the clouds
The sky does not chase the clouds.
Zen Classics
The gift of life:
The air we breathe.
BREATH: The Ultimate Unity
The molecules that create the air we breathe are incredibly stable. They can last for many thousands to millions of years. At rest we breathe about 2000 gallons of air a day. At rest a Human breath contains, more or less, 1.3 X 1023 oxygen molecules. That's more than you can count or even imagine.
In the immensity of space the atmosphere of our Earth is like a relatively thin skin--only about eight miles deep. In addition to offering the breath of life, along with the gravitational field, this skin protects us from the deadly cosmic radiation that streams through the cold, icy space wherein the spinning Earth charts its orbit. The diffusion and dispersal of these molecules is incredible. So much so that each of our breaths contains several or more oxygen molecules exhaled when a tortured Jesus asked, "Why have You forsaken me?" or when Gotama Buddha told his disciples, "Life is suffering. It has a cause and a way out."
Each of our breaths contain molecules from when Mencius, when asked where he obtained his great wisdom, exhaled, "I nourish the Great Breath."
We all share the same air, again and again, infinitely. The same Oxygen molecules pass and have passed through the lives of plants and animals that live now and have lived here for millions of years. We breathe one breath. The air we breathe is the ultimate unity, the ultimate Oneness.
Photo Paula Watkins
THE ECONOMICS OF AIR
The air we breathe is free. Some days when I open the door to "take the air" my eyes, nose and lungs are assaulted with the smell of airborne poison. Acrid, toxic, not fit for delicate lungs, I turn around and reluctantly go back indoors.
In a culture where the value of all things is judged by a numeral preceded by a dollar sign, what is free readily becomes that which is without worth. A lump of coal or a cup of motor oil come to be considered worth more than a breath of clean air.
We can do what we want with that which is without worth. You steal my lump of coal, you are a thief subject to legal scrutiny. You steal my breath of fresh air by filling it with smoke, exhaust, and pesticides, and you are merely exercising your rights as a free citizen.
The dead honey bees outside my hives, the wilted grapes and poisoned fruit trees in our garden, and sickened fishes in the stream seem to have a different opinion on what is profit and what is loss.
Air pollution is always someone's profit, and someone else's loss.
The air we breathe is life. It remains up to us to determine what that is worth.
WE HAVE DONE IT BEFORE
During the interval from 2003 to 2019 average U.S. daily prenatal PM2.5 exposure declined by 34%.
Non-wildfire PM 2.5—the pollution we have deliberately targeted through cleaner fuels, vehicles, power generation, and other measures—fell slightly more, by 37%.
Prenatal exposure to fine-particle pollution declined substantially.
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) fell by 93% due to power plant regulation.
Carbon Monoxide (CO) dropped by 80% via improved vehicle standards.
Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) decreased by 55-63%.
(A portion of the gains from anthropogenic emission reductions
were offset by increasing wildfire activity.)
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