So, I’ve been working on a new book. It’s inspired by one of my favorite books, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Like that book, this one is sort of a philosophical novel. That’s to say, my goal with the book isn’t to tell a story but to express some ideas about life and meaning and stuff like that.
Anyway, here is the first chapter. I may post more chapters as they are finalized. Eventually the whole book will be available on Amazon.
CHAPTER 1
The jellyfish spoke to me, and most remarkable of all was that it made no sense.
Jellyfish can’t speak, of course. They have no mouths. They don’t even have brains! But what really confounded me the most was that this jellyfish spoke English, but that the words it chose to use—while they made sense in the grammatical way of things—were gibberish to a logical person. My mind refused to accept what the jellyfish said. It flat-out rejected it, out of hand, as absurd and obscene.
I wanted to know more.
I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to start earlier, before I met the jellyfish in question—who has a name but for the sake of keeping some narrative mystery I will refrain from revealing until the time when it was revealed to me.
I was at the local aquarium, which had been a favorite pastime of mine for a while, since before the divorce. (Ah, yes, the divorce. We’ll get to that. One thing at a time, please, or this is really going to go off the rails and it’s much too soon for that to happen.) I had been there a handful of times with my ex-wife—better known at that time as simply “my wife”–but since regaining bachelorhood and finding myself often at a loss for what to do with my time or how to get out of my own head (which was a rather terrible place to spend time, let me tell you) I had taken up more frequent visits to the aforementioned aquarium.
At first I just loved being there, just loved the colors and the salty smell and seeing the wonderfully diverse wildlife swimming around. I was a tourist, then. But as I began to visit more often I started to get more serious about. An outing to the aquarium became more of a study for me. That’s not to say I took up marine biology or oceanography or anything like that; it wasn’t an academic study. It was more of a philosophical one.
I wasn’t interested in the whats and whys and hows of the creatures on display so much as the thats. The fact that they existed at all. That they were a thing. Beings bizarre, ancient, alien. Things that made me realize how much we take it for granted that animals look a certain way.
When you see a movie, and the characters are traveling through space, and so much care is taken to create a realistic spaceship, realistic space suits with realistic characters in them. The dialogue rings true and there was a team of astronauts on staff during production just to ensure that everything was as accurate to reality—to fictional reality—as possible. But then the ship crashes on another planet—in a very realistic fashion—and the characters are confronted with the alien menace, and it all falls apart for you. For me, at least.
“That’s so unrealistic,” I’d say. “Why do they always have to make the aliens look so bizarre? They don’t look like something that’s evolved, they look like something that’s been designed by a college art major for maximum ‘cool.’” I shake my head and leave the theater thinking what a waste. Way to blow it, Filmmaker. You had me up until then.
But then I go to the aquarium and I see the completely bizarre creatures that really do exist and I realize how strange and alien our own planet really is. Things with inexplicable eyes and odd limbs and bizarre eating methods. Stuff that defies logic altogether. Creatures that wouldn’t be out of place in a science fiction movie—or rather, would be out of place in exactly the same way that the college art major’s fictional creations were out of place.
I toured the aquarium in reverse every time I did it. That is to say, one is supposed to start with these things and eventually culminate with the jellyfish…but during one of my visits with my ex-wife…my “then” wife…eh, let’s just say Emma from now on… During one of my visits with Emma, we decided to go about it the other way, and I rather liked it because, well, the fact is I can’t explain it. I just liked it because it felt different. Like rubbing a cat the wrong way, or laying with your head at the bottom of your bed.
Sometimes novelty comes from simply breaking mundane with something new but no-less mundane.
It was on one of these trips that the jellyfish in question spoke to me. It wasn’t a long conversation by any means. Not even a conversation at all. Just a few words spoken through the air, via some kind of telepathic communication mechanism which I came to trust.
I was stooped over at the glass of one tank, staring at the little and the big moon jellies swirling about, undulating as they do, when suddenly the following sentence pierced my mind:
Who are you when you sleep?
It was my own voice, but I knew immediately the words weren’t mine. I hadn’t thought them, I hadn’t conjured them up to confuse myself. It was someone else speaking through me. Into me, in fact.
At first I stood up and looked around, expecting to see someone staring at me with an expectant, “gotcha” look on their face. I’d have to congratulate them on doing such a spot-on impression of my own voice inside my head, of course, and if they were selling something or asking for donations I’d, also of course, have to oblige. You just have to do that kind of thing when someone does something as amazing as that feat would’ve been.
But there was no one looking at me that way, or any way. The other patrons, scattered as they were, continued to mind their own business. Apparently none of them heard the voice, either.
My eyes moved to the center of the room, dominated by a massive column of glass. There in the center, floating in the blue nothingness, was a behemoth jellyfish unlike any I’d ever seen.
The pale yellow bell must have been three feet across from side to side, and the billowing, tangling tentacles hung below it to a good ten feet or more. Looking up at this jellyfish hanging there felt like looking up into the face of an ancient, unknowable god.
“Could it be…?”
I let only the first hint of the question begin to step foot across the threshold of my mind before I slammed the door, threw the lock, and went back to my dinner. Metaphorically-speaking.
Who are you when you sleep?
The voice returned and chilled me. I hurried out of that area. Out of the entire aquarium, in fact. I told myself I was done for the day, that I had seen what I came to see, and that I had quite a bit of other things to do actually now that you mention it, so I left and didn’t look back and didn’t even think about that moment again.
But that’s a lie, because I did think about it.
I spent the rest of the day thinking about it.
I spent the rest of the week thinking about it.
“Who are you when you sleep?”
The sentence made less sense the more I thought about it, like an optical illusion that seems coherent until you begin examining the details. It was like a sliver in my brain that was slowly working its way deeper in, instead of pushing itself out as slivers tended to do.
“Is it profound?” I asked myself. “Or is it one of those things that doesn’t really have any meaning when you get right down to the core of it? Maybe there’s nothing there.”
For some reason the phrase “nothing there” reminded me of the jellyfish I had been looking at when the thought struck me. Maybe that’s why I had come up with it, because it’s an empty sentiment, much like the jellies themselves. Jellyfish are fascinating in that if you really get down to it, to the cellular level, they’re almost not even really there. They’re mostly water, just kind of in a different shape than the rest of the water.
It was two weeks before I had the opportunity to go back to the aquarium. That’s not entirely true, of course. We have opportunities all the time to do the things we want to do, we just don’t take them for whatever reason. For me, it was a mixture of fears: Fear of looking like a lunatic for going to the aquarium too often (because for some reason I assume people will think I’m kinky or weird, not that I’m perhaps a scientist or a researcher or maybe just someone genuinely interested in the sea). There was also the fear that when I went, I would find nothing special. The experience wouldn’t repeat itself. Nothing would be revealed. That was another fear.
And then there was the fear that it would be revealed.
So it was after two weeks that I didn’t find the opportunity so much as the courage to return to the aquarium. I walked through in the expected direction, this time, leaving the jellyfish displays for the end of my journey. I think this time I wanted to work my way up to it, like listening to an entire album that you only moderately enjoy just to get to the song that you love more than anything, because it makes that moment so much more impactful.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have any voices in my head that weren’t brought there on my own for the majority of the tour.
Once I reached the jellies, though, that changed.
“Who are you when you sleep?” came the words again. Although I had been mulling this phrase over in my mind for more than 10 days, I knew immediately that this wasn’t just me thinking about it again. This was a new instance, a fresh injection of the koan.
I was being spoken to again, in my own voice.
I let my eyes fall upon the gargantuan tank in the middle of the room with the equally-gargantuan invertebrate hanging in it.
The voice spoke again: “Do you have an answer?”
I swallowed—gulped, really—as I stared at the big jelly pulsating above me.
“Did you–” I began aloud, but then snapped my mouth closed and finished the thought in my head. “Did you ask me that?”
“The universe asks the questions, not me,” said the voice. “How can one ask a question one doesn’t at some level know the answer to?”
“How many stars are in the sky?” I said. Thought, rather. “That’s something I don’t know the answer to.”
“You don’t know the number.”
“That’s right.”
“But you know it’s a number.”
I was speechless. Thoughtless. The voice, which I had grown convinced was, in fact, coming from the jellyfish, continued. “You understand on some level what form the answer must take, and therefore on some level you know the answer.”
I shook my head. “How are you talking to me right now?”
“Good, another example of a question you know the answer to.”
What a cheeky jellyfish. “I most certainly do not.”
“You do, Robert. Think.”
I started. He—it—knew my name. It could be further evidence that I was simply insane and talking to myself right now—or that I wasn’t insane, and I was in fact talking to a mind-reading jellyfish right now. “Alright, some kind of telepathy.” I said. “That seems obvious. But I still don’t know how.”
“Some kind of telepathy, as you said.”
“But how does it work?”
“Telepathically.”
I let out an aggravated yelp that drew the attention of a family of four whom I didn’t see standing at the other side of the columnar. I gave them a weak smile and made a nonsensical gesture that I hoped somehow communicated something appeasing to them.
“Do the details matter?” it asked me.
“Yes! They matter very much.”
“Why?”
“Because I…I have to know I’m not crazy.”
“Crazy in what way?”
“Crazy in the sort of way where I imagine invertebrates talking to me telepathically.”
“And if I, a telepathic invertebrate, explained to you the science behind this method of communicating, this would somehow prove to you that you aren’t crazy?”
“…” I said.
“Would it be more convincing if you understood the process as I explained it—or more convincing if it went over your head? Hmm?”
I wiped a hand across my face, and then looked around to find the family had moved on. Now there was just a ten year old boy standing about ten feet away, just staring at me. I wondered if he could hear something, too.
I stared at him for a moment. “Do you like jellyfish?” I asked. He turned and quickly walked away.
“I think I am crazy,” I said inside my mind. “Why else would I be hearing my voice instead of yours?”
“Interesting. What would you expect to hear instead?”
“Your voice, obviously.”
“A valid observation on the surface of things. But dig a little deeper.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean by dig a little deeper? Have you ever heard this phrase before?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I know what ‘dig a little deeper’ means.”
“Then do you still need to ask me what I mean?”
“I just meant…” I walked in a little circle and came back to where I was standing before. “I mean, in what way? What am I digging for?”
“For the answer to your question.”
“Which question? I have so many.”
“Why is it your voice you’re hearing in your head?”
“Right, that question. Yes.” I paused to consider it. Dig deeper. Deeper than what? I asked the question, I needed an answer. That’s all there was to it.
I put it to the jellyfish this way, as well.
“Perhaps you should ask a complete question in order to help you dig,” it replied.
I put up my hands in a helpless gesture, and then became acutely aware of the security camera in the ceiling nearby. I put my hands back down.
“A complete question? It is a complete question. ‘Why am I hearing my own voice in my head?’”
I didn’t hear the jellyfish sigh, but I felt it.
“Are you not accustomed to hearing your own voice inside your head?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Then that is not a complete question, is it? Ask it again with more parameters.”
“Boy, you must be really fun at parties,” I said. “Is everyone conversation with you like pulling teeth?”
“I’m sorry that it’s difficult,” he replied with obvious sincerity, “but this early in our relationship it’s important to establish…standards. This may seem like a trivial issue to you, but what you are doing now—digging deeper—will come in handy later, during less trivial topics.”
Early in our relationship? This jellyfish sounded like he had plans.
I put more thought into my question. “Okay. If I’m used to hearing my own voice inside my head, then the question would be: ‘Why am I hearing my own voice inside my head when you talk?’”
“Almost there,” was the only reply I got. I took it as a cue to dig deeper. I dug and dug, but came up empty handed after a couple of minutes.
“Is that not what you would expect?”
“No,” I replied. “I thought that was obvious.”
“Not from the incomplete question you asked, it isn’t.”
I sniffed and shifted my weight. I realized I had been standing for quite a while now, and my back was starting to get sore.
“Why is it not obvious?”
“What would you expect to hear when I talk?”
“I would expect to hear your voice.” My tone, even though I wasn’t speaking out loud, was clearly one of frustration. I secretly hoped I hadn’t offended the jellyfish.
“You haven’t offended me,” it said. Not so secret after all.
“Why am I hearing my own voice when you talk to me,” I repeated slowly and thoughtfully, then added, “instead of your voice?”
The jelly seemed pleased, as I suddenly got the sense of a smile coming across what I sensed as its face. Neither of those things existed in reality, of course; in reality, the jellyfish continued to bob and undulate above my head.
“What do you suppose my voice would sound like?”
“How—um…” I was at a loss. “I’m at a loss,” I confessed.
“Do you think I have one? Do you know very much about jellyfish anatomy?”
I gave an ironic laugh out loud. All of a sudden, the clouds parted and the answer was obvious. “I know enough to know you don’t have vocal chords. That’s why I’m not hearing your voice: you don’t have one!”
It was almost imperceptible, but I heard the voice go, “Mmmhmm.” It was a very satisfied sound. I wasn’t sure if it was satisfied with me, or with itself.
“But you don’t have a brain, either,” I pointed out. “So how are you thinking thoughts at me?”
“You’re very clever,” it replied. I could tell it didn’t mean to answer me. “That’s why I chose you.”
I felt a the air leave the room with that ominous comment. I became aware of my posture, my position in space. The time that had passed.
“Chose me? For what?” I asked without really being sure I wanted to know the answer.
“You already know the answer to that, too,” it replied with an audible grin. “But let’s not discuss that for now. One thing at a time, Robert. There is still the matter of the larger question at hand.”
“What question is that?”
“The one that drove you to come back here.”
“’Who are you when you’re asleep?’” I said.
“Who are you when you’re asleep.” it replied.
“Who am I when I’m asleep?” I paused and let the words tumble around in my brain some more. “What does it mean, though?” I knew it was a fruitless question, but I asked it anyway.
“It means what it says,” said the jellyfish. “And it says what it means. Your homework is to think about it for six days and then tell me what your answer is.”
I scoffed. Then I chuckled. Then I guffawed.
“I’m getting homework from a jellyfish!”
When I felt eyes looking at me I knew I had said something out loud again.
“Sir?”
A new voice, one that wasn’t my own and didn’t come from inside my own head. I looked to the right and there was a young, pimple-faced teenager with an embroidered polo shirt on—one that bore the logo of the aquarium—staring at me with concern. Probably concern for me as much as for himself.
“Sorry,” I said lamely. It was all I could manage. Luckily it was enough and the kid walked off. “It sounds like you’re sending me on my way already,” I thought at the jellyfish, “but I just got here.”
“We can’t proceed until you have a convincing answer to this question. You need time to think about it. Come back in six days.”
“Why six? Why not five? Or seven?”
There was a momentary silence, and then the voice replied, “Do you need seven days?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t even need six.”
“Very well, come back in three days.”
I chewed my lip. “Well, three days might be a bit too soon.” Glancing around me, I was certain people were already talking about ‘the weird guy who stares at the jellyfish.’ “People are going to think I’m a creep if I’m here too often.”
“Four days, then,” he said.
I nodded, then did some quick math in my head. “Ok, well four days from now is Sunday and they’re not open.”
“Five days.”
I shook my head. “I have work thing that afternoon.” Scratching my chin, I chuckled to myself. “I guess you already knew all this, didn’t you?”
Another silence. Then, “See you in six days, Robert.”
Without any other idea of what to do I just turned and walked towards the exit. I was expecting to hear some parting words from my interlocutor in the jellyfish tank, but none came to me.
I made a mental note to ask it what its name was next time we spoke.
To be continued…
The Vulcan Buddha 