Between Lighthouses

In dirty soil I sit listening to molecular biologists speak of dinosaur tails and lung capacity and the point where the rib cage begins to get smaller. I, nearby, with a wallpaper smile and a rib cage full of dough. Face to face the words don't come out right. One of the two wolves tripping over my tongue, walking in calculated words and clumsy anecdotes. Palm trees and city lights - far away. Minerals and penguin birthdays  - a wall of sea lion skulls. 

I sneak away from the group and walk down a flight of stairs. I look around and see a group of people crowding around an elevator. Nobody has pressed the up button, so I walk up and covertly press the button - as to not draw attention to myself. I can hear the elevator clanking to an arrival. I get on, but the others waiting remain standing where they are. Confused, the door slowly closes and the elevator begins to clank upward. Designed to take soft bodies like me up and down, my intended target is the roof that doubles as a lawn - except I arrive once again on the same floor as where I departed from the group. I stumble around looking for something to read to keep me busy, but end up running into Miri. The first thing she says is that she’s been to the museum many times before. 

“I've been coming here since I moved to the city thirteen years ago. I have been boycotting the museum for the last two years because I heard they were getting their dinosaur bones from the snatchers”. 

”The snatchers?”. 

“Yeah, you know. The bone snatchers. The infamous group of paleontologist archeologist desperados who unearth dinosaur bones and sell them for big profit”.

“Oh. Yeah I've heard of them before” I lie, hoping she continues talking as I have nothing to say. A man deep in a wool suit walks by with a walkie talkie in hand and a lengthy lanyard around his neck. 

“We did not buy stolen dino bones! You! cannot prove anything!” the small man in a deep suit says. 

“Dinosaur totalitarians! Have you no shame? Buying bones up wherever you can no matter the legitimacy. People like you make me sick” she begins digging into him. “Look at you. Dumbass walkie talkie probably on the same channel as the janitors and hot dog vendors”.

I aim Miri in another direction, away from the museum official, before all the hot dog vendors in the Bay Area descend onto us - frenetic packets of mustard and ketchup. 

“Sorry, it just bothers me so much. I mean we live on layered cities upon villages upon civilizations that we sleep above each night. And for such a significant piece of history to be like so insignificantly bought and sold makes me feel uneasy.”

“Like if the dinosaurs didn't matter, or whatever else came before us didn't matter, then we won't matter?”.

“I guess. Hey do you want to go see the aquarium?”.

We meander to the aquarium aside grassy walls displaying how sharp blades of grass used to be and an audio exhibition of what the cracking of a dinosaur egg sounds like. It reminds me of the sound of a beer can cracking open. We pass other exhibits that we as humans only have a slight grasp on - such as Thor and Loki and their impact on natural medicines, love in the time before humans, and how to make rent during the crustacean period. 

We run off to the aquarium like pesticides, and Miri asks me the question: “do you think crabs are jealous that fish can fly?”

I look deep into the aquarium and see a lone crab on the plastic seafloor, eyes galavanting upward as though calculating his chances of escape. The crab watches as a fish begins circling him. Were the crab's protruding eyes aimed at the fish? The two stay together for a moment - abreast - in a chaotically elongated tube overcluttered with fish that shouldn't be living together. Then, as quickly as they came together, they separate. The fish swims upward toward a coral surface, while the blush red crab stays where it has been, forever. It lets out a singular snip of its claw. The crab waits on the plastic seafloor for something to fall its way. 

Perhaps it is in love with the fish. Perhaps it is in love but cannot assimilate to her pace of life. The fish reciprocates a momentary love for the crab, but knows that nothing will ever come of it. It is only favorable when the shiny streak of thought appears in the context of love, only if you stare and look at it just right. The fish plays the crab along, giving it false hope that things will work out in the end. The crab continues to reside on that plastic seafloor, looking up toward cluttered waters and open skies.

The top of the aquarium opens up to the first floor of the museum. Occasionally there are birds that make it inside and take a dip atop the water. Miri says there have been two incidents of a shark eating a bird -  along with a fish jumping out of a tank - only to grow thin purple legs and run away, at least that she knows of. The aquarium workers actually say they drink the water from the tank believing it has advantageous properties.

Well, there has been a repeat bird offender displaying successful attempts at swimming atop the aquarium water. As I am standing below the surface of the tank, I see fishes quickly gather to perceive the duck. Many of the fish in the tank, shimmering through glassy distortion, quickly resume floating along, while four fishes continue aiming themselves toward the duck. I recognize one of the fish to be the same one the crab hopelessly lusted and snipped over. As all the other fishes dart off in various directions afraid of what may come, the love fish continues swimming toward the duck. The duck remains still as the fish floats aside. 

I have a theory as to why the fish stayed beside the duck. I thought, like the fish who up and walked away - it too believed it could gain physical properties to induce alternate modes of transportation. Miri said it was because the fish wished to be a duck, as the duck is one of the only things that can bridge the gap between swimming in the ocean and flying in the ocean sky. Love and longing; the idea that you always desire to be something that you can never be. 

And that overarching love that unites all things was, here too, unrequited.

Darkness as a ship continues drifting toward a silent ocean. There is no distinction of the direction the ship is bound for. No hands on deck, darkness climbs aboard through the brain and guts of the ship. It sits there, adrift, piloted only by internal connection, a feel with the water. 

And then a beam of light. Piercing yellow shimmers through the brains of the ship. Suddenly, the crew is onboard, manning their positions and operating the brains and guts of the ship. Little organs tying all the knots and polishing the guts up nice and clean. The brain changes pace. It has a direction now, a path to follow and to crawl along until the speed sets in and you really start flying. The glow slowly subsides, then ceases all together. 

It all goes by so quickly, that little sense of direction. Alone again. Awaiting rebirth as you drift silently in the ocean between lighthouses until, you appear again at a harbor.