Gene genie

I’ve not weighed myself in a while, but as I understand it, when I last did, a little over half of the mass of me was not me. And assuming I do it again some time, a lot will have changed, but that ratio?… not so much.

I’m a bundle of 20,000 genes but there’s a couple of million others along for the ride, stringing together thousands of species of other creatures busy exploiting the chemical gradients in the nooks and crannies of me.

There’s a few hundred instinctively nurturing my gut instinct. Their intestinal planning committee came up with a plan for my living when I was born.

And when I knead and roll some pizza dough made delightfully squidgy by yeast, there are yeasts in residence on and in my skin that help me keep skin in the game… of life.

I’m just a big old community of parallel lives masquerading as a single life. And so are you. Being bound up in commensalism is a pretty damn cool way of being

— urlyman