Month: June 2020

Pelagic. I came across that word in an article about a shark that mysteriously swam out to sea. Researchers were speculating on why she had strayed so far from home on her “pelagic journey”. In my mind the shark simply swam away from the beach. I forget that the ocean, like space, is disorientingly three-dimensional. The pelagic zone is not just far from either coast it’s also in between the top and the bottom. Creatures that live near the surface and those that live near the floor rarely explore the massive expanse of the in-between. Most of the ocean’s volume is in the pelagic zone, boundaryless, without cover, without reference point, without scenery, without horizon. This is the open ocean. How much does direction matter here? What kinds of creatures flourish in the frameless? How do you hide when there’s nowhere to hide? Is the expansive sameness boring or terrible?

Thinking about the incomprehensible solitude of this shark’s journey a sense of claustrophobia stirs inside. The discomfort appears neither at the surface nor at the floor. It is suspended in the fathomless in-between, where ambiguity glows like gravity. I’m afraid to look. I’m afraid to drift from the edges. Free from shimmer and tumble and armor and shadows a large migratory presence glides in the pelagic vacuum. Free from anything to see the Presence is left with nowhere to look but in.

The shark was pregnant. That’s why she swam away… and returned with something new.

-T. Weeks