Beauty and Assumption
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Many months ago, I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It had been on my to-do list for years, but with so many other incredible sights around that part of the central California coast I always drove by without time to stop. This time, I gave the place a whole day.
It's an incredible building, perched right on a particularly picturesque Pacific bay. From an outdoor deck, I watched a whale repeatedly breach less than a mile off the coast. Then I returned to the dark galleries where, peering into the enormous windows of the tanks, I learned all about the incredible marine life of the California coast.
I've always been particularly fascinated by the jellies. Transparent, pulsating, elegant, they seem so far from the kind of life we encounter every day. I can almost imagine them to be space aliens.
I was utterly entranced watching a type of jelly-like mollusc, the Lion's Mane Sea Slug, swim around. They have an enormous fringed, translucent hood for a mouth, a big saucer that reminded me of Star Trek vessels. To watch them glide in a glowing, twisting ballet... I could have been there all day.
Then a woman with a child came by.
"What's that?" the woman asked.
"A sea slug," the girl replied, looking at the sign.
"Ew," said the woman, without even looking, and they hurried on.
And I thought, what a missed opportunity to learn something.
