Nature, Out of Sync
June 18th, 2008 by Gnat
Jellyfish — brainless, boneless, venomous and sometimes luminous creatures composed of 98% water. WEIRD AS SHIT LOOKING. According to the brilliant (!) Rigorous Intuition blog, jellyfish are creatures so fluid and phantom-like they might be considered “almost entirely not there.” Guess what? These watery, tentacled ghosts are multiplying at a damn scary rate. Due to overfishing and global climate change, jellyfish have begun to reproduce in record numbers in oceans around the planet. I had read about this phenomenon a while back, but an article I read today on the subject brought the mysterious jellyfish back into my consciousness.
I have never been stung by one of these fuckers (knock on wood), but as a youth in the Houston area I knew friends who hadn’t been so lucky while swimming in the tar-infested, lukewarm gulf waters of Galveston. Helpful hint: both meat tenderizer and urine are known to help ease the pain of the scorching rash produced by a jellyfish sting. So if you get stung and don’t have any meat tenderizer handy at the beach, get your buddy to pee on you. No lie.
Because they look so psychedelic, I wish jellyfish were more benevolent entities. I want them to be angelic sea creatures of grace, beauty and mystery. Instead they are much more ominous, their recent proliferation of the planet’s oceans a warning signal of some larger global disaster yet to come. That’s really all I have to say on the subject for now, because the aforementioned RI post concerning these watery beasties has already mined the best jellyfish metaphors. I will, however, leave you with this H.P. Lovecraft quote, also borrowed from Rigorous Intuition:
“Foremost among the living objects were inky, jellyfish monstrosities which flabbily quivered in harmony with the vibrations from the machine. They were present in loathsome profusion, and I saw to my horror that they overlapped…. (Lovecraft, From Beyond)”
Sweet dreams and happy swimming, friends.
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