Purification and Energy Transfer

The Story and Poems Of Julian While*

Julian While was a twenty-year-old college student when he got a job as a lab assistant to a scientist who was studying the amino acid sequence of the enzyme cytochrome. Cytochrome is an enzyme, a protein which is part of animal and plant cellular "hardware" involved in electron transfer, or energy transfer, if you will, which is fundamental to respiration and life itself. But Julian's job was smelly and not pretty.

Every three weeks or so he drove to the bay and loaded three large green plastic garbage bags with dark seaweed-like, spinach-colored, strong-odored, slimy plant material and hauled the bags back to the lab. A week and many mundane steps later he performed "elution", the near-final step in purifying the protein for Hiroshi, his boss, to study.

In this climax (the step called elution), a liquid mixture was poured into the top of a tall, resin-filled glass cylinder, and an ever-darkening, ever-thinning brown pure dark ring or band was seen slowly descending through the resin. Julian finally captured this brown prize in a miniature glass beaker, not much larger than a thimble. His large bag of spinach was now reduced to this tiny aliquot of brilliant brown liquid of nearly-pure protein. The boss was ready to sequence amino acids, and to Hiroshi, the liquid was as precious as gold.

You must really be getting a bit bored by now. And Julian While must really have known his job was turning bags of seaweed into drops of brown liquid, but he preferred to think his work was about how purification leads to understanding the transfer of life energy.

Julian took to stories and poems, and he never stopped wondering about purification and energy transfer. Ponder his first stabs at describing elution, and imagine the horror of Haiku masters, particularly given their scant previous exposure to elution-Haiku:

ELUTION

Elution is clean
untrapping of chemicals
from sandy resin

ELUTION

Filter-like boulders
that trap and pin logs sideways
but all this so small

ELUTION

Pour thin green soup in
out dribbles cytochrome pure
ancient new protein

ELUTION

Cytochrome links us
as people and dinosaurs
or spinach and mud

ELUTION

Elution is pure
magic chemical sucking
truth out of the sand

Julian While

NIGHTDREAM

Ko was Chinese, his life a pact,
like me a doctor, twice over in fact,
we sat and shook ivory, Ko quite the best-
he came from the centrum-I shot from the chest.

He knew of white cells, healers and stress,
quite simple in life, at centrum a mess
lost in the music, fast in the heart,
life was now quiet-I stopped with a start.

That Turk was her lover the lioness won't say,
my father sought rest, she fought her dismay,
faith to know God is now gained or lost,
so taste as you must and welcome the cost.

His art and practice burst through with life
he too a healer unheeled his wife
his smile unsolved mysteries I sensed through the smoke,
the tease of mist lifted-I lingered and woke.

Julian While

MUSE

Muse you don't ponder
you don't linger nervously
you hide in quiet

ALLEYS

Lightly laughter lifts and leaves,
sparkling spray of spirit's ease
soft hair, warm skin fine
serene in stillness clear like wine

winding paths of miles and years,
passion pulsing, passing fears
love in answer eager open
moisture moving melting tears

fantasies find forest lawns,
the sea, the breeze, caressing dawns,
eager eyes, nuzzled nest,
sunlit smiles, sunbrown breast

moments marking truth of time
teasing life's erotic rhyme,
sweet surrender silence pain-
as nights will fall the days will rain.

Julian While

HOME

Soothing southward etched in ice
drifted dreams of paradise
lacing lightbeams bathed me bare,
crescent crystals crossed the air

People pigeons patterns fold
satin, churches, scattered gold,
days, decisions, doubts diffracted
warm within the womb of cold

sunlit shadows, scent of mist,
dancing dewdrops gently kissed
moments moonstreams films of foam
I know I'll never find my home.

Julian While

ELUTION

Elution is truth
distilled from society's
illusion of time

Julian While

MAYDAY

Your cold eyes mock God
old soul flushed in alcohol-
it promised you peace.

A disgusting fright
all sacred and yes profane
you're laughing at God

Blessed creature you
profane mocking child of God,
cursed grain of truth.

MAYDAY

Blessed cursed creature, child of god
your time is no greater or shorter than mine
and the elution of truth, distilled from society
leaves no time,
forever instantly gone,
and here!
and gone!

THE DRIFTER

Hello, how are you, who are you, oh my,
the pain is so great that at times I won't try
my father and mother, my sister and brother,
the children some elsewhere,
yet unborn
I cry.

Hello, who are you, how are you and why,
the pain is so great that at times I can't cry
doubts and decisions
glory, derisions
my soul cannot speak,
my heart cannot fly

Perfection, confusion
clear crystal diffusion,
the truth of illusion,
to live is to die.

ILLUSION

To be exact it is diffuse
entwined in dreams that won't shake loose,
and have I flown from passion's noose-
from maze to murk?

SOUTH OF FRANCE

Last night what a fright
bad dream no fresh cream
no joke no baroque
petanque stank
franc sank.

I awoke had a smoke
dash of hash, tobacco spoke
back on to Cezànne
then Matisse
back at peace.

*Julian While is the Nom de Plume of one of our classmates who graduated in 1964. Julian wants to share this work (written about twenty years ago) with us, though prefers to remain anonymous.