I came to the aquarium as I always do, when it is quiet. The crowds come for feeding time. They are chasing the agitation, the water filled with bubbles, the frenzy of desire. I come for something else, to watch the creatures swim slow loops or float, hide in their pretend reefs and wait. That is how we really live, isn’t it? Always returning to the places we just left, always waiting for something else to happen.
That day, you were standing with me in the tunnel, rigid and transfixed. The ocean under glass, you told me. A minute later you asked, did I want to see an immortal?
You led me by the hand into the research section, a place that reminded me of university—data posters on the walls, desks with computers and stray bits of equipment. Then into your office, full of the fossils of sea vertibrates hundreds of millions of years old. Some of the species you showed me live now. Some of them are extinct, including your favourties. I don’t remember all their names. I remember the jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, tiny and nacreous, never dying, but as you explained, a reincarnation that comes at the cost of its memories.
We could play a game like that, take a drug that prevented the formation of memory, meet each other again and again for the first time. Unlike these jellyfish, we could take notes for our future selves. But I know those movies have been written, and I know all of humanity has come before and left us their notes, history and literature. You added, all of natural history has come before and left us its notes, and you put a fossil back onto your desk.
I remember the poster you backed up against, algae populations against ocean depth, as you drew me to you. Not the lips, you said, opening the neck of your blouse and bringing my head there.
Who would not want a return to childhood, to live again and again, endlessly grow old and revert to innocence? But even the immortal medusae are vulnerable, you said later; even the most wonderful of creatures are sometimes lost.
You must know that I still visit the tunnel under the aquarium.
Reads like your turritopsis nutricula is You.
Curious… What makes You your turritopsis nutricula?
People who give you little insights like that tend to play on your mind… or so I find at least.
Nice comparison, I like the description of nature.