My cousin Raphael called me a few days ago from Oklahoma City. Raphael is the son of my first cousin Robin-Roberta. He's 25. Lean. Tall. Light Brown Eyes. An interesting genetic pseudo-cloning of me. DNA trips me out. Actually my friend Hortense and I were just having one of our deep-down spiritual-intellectual conversations we've been having since our time began 15 years ago in the neo-Bohemia of San Francisco's Lower Haight, when we were uncombed and performing poetry and always in need of some good vegan Shepherd's Pie. We were talking about DNA and if we actually inherit our ancestor's eyes. Not the physical eyes of course. But what they've seen; their perspective; their experiences. Hortense and I were talking about how some family members feel like they belong to the same tribe. And some clearly don't. That they're some family who share the same sense of humor, the same inkling toward breaking rules; and some who turn up their nose to such "frenzy".

But we're both fascinated with the idea that there's possibly something in the DNA that creates tribe. Something my great grandfather Leslie read in his Lit class 100 years ago while attending Walden University that has shaped me. Something my great grandad Pa Lucious refused to endure as sharecropper in the small remoteness of Crawfordville, Georgia that has informed me. That even with Hortense, who was adopted at infancy and upon meeting her birth father, was overwhelmed by how much her father smiled liked her, roared against injustice like her. We're no scientists, that's for sure, but we concluded each of our ancestors experiences must have added a layer to how we react to and move through the world. And not just from the standard intra-cultural conditioning, but something inside, something molecular, passed down through DNA. That our entire being is layered with experience from every ancestor who's come before us.

Raphael feels like the same tribe.

Not that he's out breaking rules [like me], or that he participates in discussions that challenge religion, environmental consciousness and other left-wing tendencies [like me], but there was something in his voice. A certain "understanding". A certain heads-up and calm knowingness of his world, and a complete unwillingness to participate in the bullshit involved with crazy. Something that reminded me of my uncles, my brothers, my mom, 70 percent of my cousins, me.

And after his joking confession that he was "finally putting on weight", things got real interesting. My mom's family shares this inherited extremely high-metabolism that has time-traveled through our blood for at least three generations and has molded us into these lean, hyper creatures]. My Uncle Gordon once told me he didn't stop looking like a 20 year old until he was 40. So when Raphael mentioned he was over-eating at Mickie D's and now he's gone from 140 pounds to 150, I immediately bulldozed him with, Have you seen the movie Supersize Me? Yeh, you know me. I got pushy. [He was a tribe member afterall. He'd understand my crazy bulldoze tactics for truth.]. Anyway... He asks what was Supersize Me? I told him it was a movie about food. And to rent it and call me afterwards. He responded with a calm non-defensive: Oh, it sounds like something that's gonna change my world.

[Hey, I'd do anything to save a tribe member from the ugly of bad eating].

So... just yesterday, Raphael emailed me and there was one line in the body of the message: "Just letting you know I watched Supersize and now I'm scared to eat McDonalds."

Oh, the joy of sharing DNA, of sharing a state of being, of seeing the world through layered molecular memory. See, I got a feeling somebody way back when rejected the culinary disease-making of pork, or some such. 'Cause food-consciousness just seems pre-determined, and very molecular, in my way of being.

Until next time,

Keith