Some Thoughts about Earthquakes, Self, The Chocolate Church, and speech

     There was a "nice" earthquake the other day. As I sat down at my computer in the hotel about 9:30 am I felt it immediately....un sismo borachito,,,,,a drunken earthquake. These are the suave types that make one feel disoriented,,,a little like a putting a "buzz"on,,,,as though one was sitting on one of those backyard seats that glide to and fro. Each summer thousands of people sway gently, in casual conversation, swatting mosquitoes on one of these wooden seats (called balancoires in Quebec). They are usually made in Quebec, Canada.
     The quake lasted thirty seconds. The doors in the office opened and closed a little, the lights swayed, the electrical cables rocked. It is still such an odd sensation. After the first few seconds you realise that it is not a "killer" so confidence grows. You can actually pass some seconds enjoying the gentle ride.
     The epicenters of many of these quakes originate in the state of Guerrero,,,about 4 hours away. I still cannot comprehend the amount of power released here,,,,,,,,and the shoot from the hip control,,,,to gently rock that quantity of earth and rock and not pulverize everything to dust. We are talking about moving thosands of square miles of earth and rock to a depth of perhaps several kilometers. I think they measure the power of earthquakes in Joules....I don't know this guy Joules but he compressed the expression of massive quantities of energy into an equation. In physical terms, lifting an apple one meter takes 1 joule of energy. A liter of gasoline has 31,536,000 joules of energy in it. My truck gets 19 kilometers expending 31,536,000 little fiery joules.An earthquake of let us say 5.5 magnitude (like the one I felt), is equivalent to like 75,000,000 pounds of TNT or 37,500 tons. This is equal to about 20 nuclear bombs. It seems a small amount of explosive to move that much earth and stone,,,but then 25 nuclear bombs going off in one place at one time,,,that is a mexican fiesta.                                                                                                                                               I think that the hotel, with all its tons of concrete,,,,is a piece of nothing. What then does that make me? Compared to the hotel Masswise I, Peter, am less than nothing,,,I am Pete that is true,,,and I possess a "ME" in me. People recognize me as Pete,  and react to an appearence... and of course the Pete manner, but much of Pete, like an iceberg is invisible. Who can measure an invisible self,????,,something separate from my dead weight flesh and bone. Self is the thing that is no-thing,,,, unquantifiable. However it is that self which confronts life and leaves a trail,,,,,,even if the self, itself, is just a "confederacy" of chemicals. It has no measurable mass. What makes anyone "that" person, really amounts to nothing physically,, except that the flesh and bone provide a kind of temple for this "holy ghost" that ambles about making mistakes.  You might disagree with this assessment of what I am describing as "self" , but it is the way I see the human being. The person is nothing but an aggregate of some minerals, a few elements, some electricity, and, Voila, you have the physical base that houses the invisible thing that is Pete,,,,and according to some since my strings don't vibrate the same as another's I am me. 
     When I was young it was a taboo to enter "other" churches. That was the catholic rule lest we stray into some heresy. Stay put and stay Mary. There was a congregationalist church in my home town. Their spare, natural, uncomplicated architecture had the same appeal as a copse of large trees. I never entered for fear of tripping an alarm in my soul. When I moved to Maine however and had shed much of my catholic skin I discovered that if you wanted to hear a good folk music concert you had better visit the "chocolate church" in Brunswick. It was called the chocolate church for its color. It seemed the Congregationalists were in the entertainment business.
     I have been reading about our antipasados,,,,,homo erectus to homo sapiens. I bought a Scientific American devoted to "US", and what's happening in the study of human fossil records. I needed reading material "para la tasa" . One article was discussing a theory as to why we have the capability of speech. It is evident what that capability has done for human kind as a species......just visit the tianguis on sunday,,,,,, diez por diez,,, panbasos,,, diez por diez. Don't pooh-pooh that because it takes a profound amount of cooperative speech to arrive at that moment.
     The article stated that there is evolutionary adaption and another element at work called exaptation. An exaptation is a biological adaptation or random change that is present but does not get used right away. It may need some refinement. Feathers, for example were an evolutionary adaption. They were not first used for flying but later were employed for this function. The flightless got wings. The voice box of our ancestors,,,so they say was not long enough or low enough in the throat to be used for speech until along came Mary,,,the chick born with the apparatus. She couldn't talk yet but she had "the stuff" and passed it on to her descendants who had not yet discovered the pleasure of gossiping.
     The Japanese have done many experiments with their native monkeys,,called macaques. A tribe of them that lives near the sea was given fruit each day. It wasn't long before the youngest ones discovered that they could wash the sand off in the ocean. The young adults later picked up on this idea,,,but the oldest in the tribe resisted the new method prefering instead gritty mangoes,,, like my mother who preferred dull knives. The scientist who wrote the article about exaptative speech in humans used this example of young macaques to speculate. The old are always more resistant than the young to change (for good and bad reasons). Even if an adult had the voice box of Mother Mary,,,,the foundress,,,,the real "Deep Throat" ,,,they may have not had the initiative to form speech,,,,in itself a very complicated process. Who then? The children at play. Interesting, no?