Squish Goes the World

This is the crystal jellyfish, also called Aequorea aequorea in my day, but since patriotically retaxonated Aequorea victoria. I took these pictures last weekend while out on the bay. The bottom one tells the larger tale: these creatures have fairly choked the lower Sound. (The large white mass at the top of that photo is a solid block of Aequorea, extending how far into the depths only they know.)

And it's not just here. Jellyfish – direct descendants of the earliest animals ever fossilised – have exploded in all the oceans of the world.

When I was a kid we'd get this sort of thing once every few years. My grandmother called it a "jellyfish raid", and I vividly remember catching several participants in a jar to marvel at during one when I was about 10.

But this isn't that. To start with, where those raiders of old averaged less than two inches across, most of these start at four and move up from there. In other words, the raids of my childhood were caused by a temporary fertility spike, prodded by what intermittent stimulus I never learned. Whatever's behind the new status quo is actually sustaining these extreme populations throughout their life cycle.

Aequorea have been a favourite of mine since I stared into that jar on the wooden arm of my grandmother's old Morris chair. In addition to the simple beauty of their glasslike, gently-undulating cloche, and the added wonder of bioluminescence, they're completely harmless. Nobody larger than plankton ever got stung by Aequorea victoria.

Which is why it pains me to look on them now with discontent. Along with the sudden surge in size and number of lion's manes (which I've also documented here), it's a compelling sign that we've finally cocked up this planet so badly it's headed back to the Cambrian.

And there weren't many people in the Cambrian.

WW: Aerial sheep

(Brilliant late-summer day on the bay. To see the photo full-sized, open image in a new tab.)

No-Rank Koan

The hermit Hyung asked: "What has more value, a fake lion
or a real cat?"


Wu Ya's commentary: "Depends on what you're selling."

(Photo of unknown provenence.)

WW: Square fudo

(100-year model; square ring, representing the Four Noble Truths, i.e. the four walls of the eremitical monastery.)

Banana Seat Buddhism

"Popping a wheelie just meant pulling the front wheel off the ground for a moment, but riding a wheelie was the measure of the kid. Alfred Dickerson could ride a wheelie all day long, as if riding on one wheel was God's plan."

(Definitive definition of enlightenment, vs simple kensho, courtesy of fellow Blogger blogger Jim Neill. From his Blogger blogger blog, Life in the Nohodome. Jim's whole meditation on the 70s-kid bike culture, from which this excerpt was excerpted, is brilliant. And scientifically accurate. To the third decimal place. After multiple blind and diverse dates. Go see it.)


(Snapshot of unknown provenance.)

WW: August moment

Hermit Manifesto

There is no compromise with the Devil; either you win, or he does. Intellectuals resist this truth, with their instinctive fear of absolutes, while fanatics, in their contempt for ambiguity, snatch it up too eagerly. But the fact remains that watered poison and poisoned water are the same.

Groups – all of them, political, social, and religious – convince their members to put up with them, to ride along on their acts of unreason, violence, and injustice. Many of those individuals disagree with the acts in question, but defer to a collective morality they hope is greater and wiser than their own. But just one dissent, one shaking head, explodes the illusion of finality.

That's why power must kill every seeker to triumph. It's the logic of resistance: it takes thousands of repressors, striving constantly, to enforce uniformity, but just one of us, merely existing, to destroy it. Power crows, "We've won! Give up!", but those last words are telling: if you don't, it can't.

So oligarchies obsess over enemies, earned and invented, and the wicked wallow in witch hunts. Because no matter how large the majority, how positive the polls, leave one independent thought zapping between two ears, and dominion is denied.

Therefore, evil is collective; good individual. Never – never – surrender your autonomy to any group, movement, or leader.



(Photo courtesy of Juan Gatica and Wikimedia Commons.)