The Whiskers about the mouth

(Dictionary diving part 3)

For those who thought I was just playing or cheating at what word I randomly pulled from the dictionary today you will have your proof that I am the genuine deal.

For I would never have pulled this word by choice. I have no encounter with it before. The word is “Lopho-”.

It isn’t even a word, it’s a prefix. But in good sport, we tackle it none-the-less, to see what it might also offer our view of the great stage around us.

The idea of lopho is that there are crested tufts on something. Usually they hover around the feeding sourse of our creature. Imagine the moustache which a catfish wears. Or even the whiskery antennaes on the face of your dog or cat. Lopho is actually more for a bird or a fish or a miscroscopic aquatic organism.

Little cilia of hair grab at things or help ambulate.

So what comes to mind is the un-overlookable importance of small things.

It is easy for the giants of earth to wonder why the dwarves among us are needed. If towering buildings could talk I’m sure they would question the purpose of those perky little micro-houses popping up in the yards of the minimalists of the Western States.

And the arm can’t imagine the necessity of a pinkie toe. And so it all goes. But even if you are a believer in each one playing their part, it is even hard for you probably to discern the criticalness of a whisker, a piece of three frayed strings, a cilia.

But these devices are not puny and neglected by God. They are critical and fun.

Try cutting one half of the whiskers on your cat’s face (No, don’t really!). But if you did — not that I did anything that crazy when I was 9 — and if the part you snipped was from one side of their muzzle, notice how that cat doesn’t walk exactly the same as it ambles on its purrish way. There might be a lean, an orientation one direction — a veer if you will. Watch it enter a room or a closed quarters. The cat uses those feelers like a miner in war stretches it’s long-proceeding sweeper to engage an explosive before he himself is any where near it. And that’s what you’ve trifled with on your cat. You have screwed with it’s orientation. All because of a snip against 10 little strands of cuticled hair.

But that’s how it goes in the world

No matter how small you climb down into Alice’s wonderland, you will never bypass the structures of meaning. I believe that is what Quantum physics is all about. The tiniest hole you breach is a very large universe indeed.

So do not despise the small things.

That is the lesson of the Lopho.

Even the crest on the neighboring chicken’s head has a purpose. A couple of feather’s here, the gills on an ugly fish there. There are no accidents. No pieces to airbrush away as not needed.

Nothing is superfluous.

It’s all Lopho.

It’s all a piece of God’s giant unmatchable terrarium.

That’s why we play this game: Random words for non-random lives. I hope you keep playing.