"I
saw a baby jelly fish (medusa
of Obelia), its vibrant body beating with inherited pulse from aeons
past, and in its midst - a tunnel of all its ancestors back through time...
and me, my face, down there - somehow entwined within their legacy!"
 |
| "I
saw a baby jelly fish (medusa
of Obelia), its vibrant body beating with inherited pulse from aeons
past, and in its midst - a tunnel of all its ancestors back through time...
and me, my face, down there - somehow entwined within their legacy!"
|
| Down the tunnel I travelled, followed by a jury of Ocean Plankton, to pass me by - to touch me momentarily - their ocean coldness against my blooded flesh; their alien tendrils caressing my humanity... not cruelly, no... more as if to probe our differences and our likeness. One-by-one they came... | |
Polyps - their tentacles exploring my body! |
Polyps - tentacled microscopic animals from freshwater sources and the ocean - include hydra and moss animals (Bryozoans) - with the latter seen here above. |
Sea Mussel Larva behaving like Rotifers - their whirling cilia vibrating against my skin. |
Sea mussel larva behaving like Rotifers - wheel animals, microscopic creatures living in ponds and the ocean - many with cilia around the mouth which seem to spin like windmills. |
Jellyfish - their pulse matched by mine. |
Medusa - new-born jellyfish so tiny, so transparent, almost invisible under a microscope until you spot its tell-tale movement: a vibrant thing... spring lamb of the sea maybe? |
Comb Jellies - shining like beacons to light the tunnel. |
Comb Jellies - bright shining beacons in the sea with comb-like tentacles. |
Bacillaria paxillifer - the ocean's miniature puzzle. |
The 'carpenter's rule' diatom: Bacillaria paxillifer, sliding, mysteriously through the water. |
Starfish
Larvae - microscopic ocean babies
|
Starfish in all their different shapes, sizes, and stages... like a galaxy of dark stars within an endlessly drifting deep-blue sky. |
 There
was something else in the tunnel with us... not microscopic... no - not
small at all. It was a powerful beast: a stingray! As it approached, I
wondered if it was to be my executioner - summoned, like some evil henchman
to do the bidding of the small ?
|
| I still realised all this was just a drowning dream... or was it? |
| Suddenly
- we were all one: the creatures of the sea and me! Their senses and mine,
moulded, combined, a single entity flowing through the sea... drifting
through our pasts... and our destinies. And I knew what my fate would be!
As I felt the suffocating sea drive the last wisp of air from my lungs,
I knew how it would end... and why it should be this way. My dream faded
to the deepest black of ocean bed and lost awareness while the ocean and
its cast of living things, filled my mind with two final images - to tell
a truth I had not suspected...
"...and I saw what they could see - as they looked
with their alien senses...
|
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| (c) Vanessa Summers, Larry Legg, & Lightscape 1998 |
