DEEP SEA COMMUNISM

In response to question #3 of the inquiry.

SOME THINGS WE’VE LEARNED FROM OUR EXPEDITIONS

Deep sea communism is obviously a communism of suction, turning around, detaching and re-attaching where semiautonomous processes coordinate with each other in a different kind of night. More neurons in one of our stretched out limbs than in your top-down brain, mammal. More communication in a chance encounter in that great fluid than in matrimony or oath or I don’t know what. Perhaps a communist strategy of never-before-seen rather than reproducible results, an opportunist kind of socialist thought rather than the democratist-social variety? A vehicle of changing colors and adept at dodging pressures (top-down pressure, whatever its origin). That new chemical illumination with glimpses of movable mountains and sunken treasure, decomposing carcasses and quick fish.

In one of my claws I hold a pearl that is a testament to remarkable irritations. In the other a veil of algae for spying new truths. You don’t have to choose. A sideway glance against progress, a hardness against my carapace and the sickly softness beneath. We are a conspiracy of equals around the mouth that spews heat, a merry-go-round of albino dreamers in that small strip of life next to the unthinkable cold.

And in that darkness, of course, shapes appear. Lights unheard of, flailing fins, a plume of movement. And all sorts of eyes, watching and letting themselves be watched. And then they disappear. From which the solipsist in his submarine might draw the wrong conclusions. But in my bed under which the movement never stops and the whispering never ceases, that error is unthinkable. And as in bed, so in the depths below.

One underwater flower in particular, with crystal petals and a meaty interior might be worth mentioning. It moves in harmony with an unseen behemoth, perhaps no longer of this world, ancient dance steps of longing. Of course there are no years where it dwells, no wall on which to mark the scicillations of anticipation that are repeated every night (ah, but there has only been the one, see). The crystal catches the light of every passing fish, breaks it down and sends it as so many love letters into that horrible vacuumless void. Its not stoicism, because stoicism is the recanting of ecstasy. And that beauty of glass and pulsing protein is a frozen scream.

[And the seven hidden tribes of krill, always leaving and never returning. With their costumes, dances and intricate feeding arrangements.]