Theocosmology

A little article considering the implications of the assertion that spirit is matter.

Where the Wild Things Are

If I were to do a movie of where the wild things are, it would be dark.  When the forest grows in his room, it’s a creepy scene: the paint bubbles up, discolors, and starts to peel; the shag carpet turns into centipedes that burrow into the floor, which rots away into the detritus of the forest floor.  The forest itself is dark and malicious.  Max’s wolf suit becomes real wolf skins, with a bare wolf skull for a helmet.  He’s both exhilarated and scared of his new power; he runs, and finds that he’s supernaturally fast, like a wolf. His fingernails are sharp and hard, like claws, and he leaves gashes in the trees as he runs by.

When he reaches the water, he summons a storm to drive him across the ocean, but as he gets nearer to the opposite shore, it blows out of control, culminating in the water-thing:

Once Max gets past the water thing, he lands on the beach–perhaps barely surviving the storm and avoiding rocks.  Bedraggled, soaked, and exhausted, he moves from the wind-lashed shore for what seems to be shelter in the forest.  Then he hears the wild things and gets a glimpse of the terrible yellow eyes.  The dog-like thing with a horn on its nose would look something like this:

Crawley Creatures’ Hound of the Baskervilles concept

He’s chased back to the beach when he remembers his powers, turns, and his eyes burst into a bright yellow flame; he flashes his eyes quickly at each of the attacking Wild Things, and a shock wave knocks each one back.  Then returning to the dog-like one, he stares it down and the Thing writhes in pain, yelping; the others begin to comprehend the extent of his power.  He finally quenches his eye magic, and the dog lies panting, trying to recover its strength.

He leads the wild things to war and conquers the entire forest.  He’s crowned with even more power, then has a night-on-bald-mountain kind of rumpus, until he chases down and kills (or just nearly?) a dog in the forest and realizes it’s his own.  Horrified, he gives the command to stop; the wild things do, but not willingly, and by morning his power has ebbed to the point that he can’t hold them at bay any more.  He flees to the boat and has just enough magic to launch himself back to the opposite shore, and the dream fades.  He finds himself awaking from a fever, with a washcloth on his forehead and some soup waiting for him.

Two separate organisms on their way to becoming symbiotic

The single-celled Hatena and the algae Nephrosolmis live independent lives: Hatena has a “mouth” with which it eats smaller creatures and organic material; Nephrosolmis gets its food from sunlight. But when Hatena eats Nephrosolmis, the algae grows inside it, discards its organelles, changes its mouth into an eyespot, and swims toward light. The algae makes enough food to keep them both alive. When Hatena reproduces, one daughter keeps all the algae, and the other goes hunting again.

See also solar-powered sea slugs.