Jellyfish Trance
At the Monterey Aquarium in California a few weeks ago, I came upon this scene straight out of my novel Cobalt Blue. The picture's above, the moment in the story below.
"A great window onto an underwater world and inside, slowly rising and falling, bubble shapes with their trailing strands. Jellyfish! Chillingly primitive. Before her, one was rising, a pale blue-tinged moon in early evening light, streaming tendrils barely there. Water riffled the purplish edge of another creature, a breeze touching the lightest of curtains. This live thing made of almost nothing but water. Her urgency, her upset: she couldn’t remember the feel of it. She too was floating in a cool clear medium. She felt the coolness inside her head: this is what the deepest part of my mind is like, the hidden underside, floating living bits, prehistoric and weird. Now I know…"
(We do find our characters, our role models, and ourselves in surprising places.)
Categories: 2013
Tags: Cobalt Blue, Monterey, monterey aquarium
Comments
How serendipitous!
It was kinda thrilling to walk around a corner and find, Judy.
Tropical-dwelling box jellyfish have a cube-shaped body,
and four different types of special-purpose eyes: The
most primitive set detects only light levels, but
another is more sophisticated and can detect the color and size of objects.
such as Cobalt Blue
A jellyfish expert, Bob!