after Leeuwenhoek, we realized that things were much smaller than we imagined, and we’ve busied ourselves ever since detailing the infinite number of tiny moving parts that make up our world and ourselves. we’ve become so fascinated at our ability to reduce, that we have almost been able to convince ourselves that love is a flush of seretonin and oxytocin and dopamine, or a broken heart, their nadir. perhaps the truth is that when someone’s heart starts beating pat-pat-pat at the first rings of her telephone, that these hormones are not love’s explanation, but rather the residue it leaves as it passes through her, to him.

circling back to itacare, brazil, high in the air. the last time i was there, between sessions of being tumbled by the ocean’s wash, surfboard tangled somewhere deep below (above?), i was checking my email madly to see if a mission had come through. this time i will be doing it to see if i get to travel to London to accept the John Llewyn Rhys prize for the book i wrote about the one that eventually did. it might be the only compelling reason in the world to leave brazil early. in the hold below me, in my backpack underneath pairs of shorts and sunglasses and different flavors of Frisbees is an overcoat, a scarf, galoshes, a shirt, and a tie.

i think there is a subtle shift in the psychology of many in the high income world with their responsibility to those who are born into poverty. a decade ago, there was a belief that spending oceans of money would allow some of it to trickle down and float boats for even the poorest. it was easy. business as usual. we’re doing something by doing nothing. now with the wisdom of overconsumption in question, i sense a change in belief, one that allows us to keep our actions unexamined, to conduct business as usual, to ignore a true responsibity to those who suffer, then die young. it is this: does the world really need any more humans?