I went to a talk today called "Baryshnikov and Bohr: The Biochemistry of Ballet". The first slide was "Oranges" by Ellsworth Kelly. "When you think of a cell, what is the first thing that comes to mind?" A circle. A semipermeable phospholipid bilayer. The cell membrane gathers together the components necessary for life and maintains their appropriate concentrations so life can continue. How wonderful! How wonderful to imagine our predecessors, little vesicles of the components necessary for life. And when enough of these cells came to be, they began to interact just as the components necessary for life interacted. They touched membranes; they opened and closed to each other. If it were not for the membrane - the best boundary of all, proof that boundaries are necessary and life-giving, boundaries say YES AND NO - water, carbon, nucleotides, phosphate compounds, everything necessary for life would just be scattered to the winds in random concentrations! We couldn't even get started. This little bubble of fat gathered up a mouthful of its surroundings and created a little environment, a little womb, a little home, a little safe space, protected for just a moment from the randomness outside. The point was not to hide away in fear or solitude from the environment outside. The point was to interact, to exchange, to be penetrated by and secrete into the environment outside from a point of strength and just the right amount of structure. Now we are cathedrals of those tiny microenvironments, and we interact just as the components necessary for life interacted. We touch membranes, we open and close to each other.