The Last Five Months

I cannot believe it has been since April that I posted.  Must admit, and I have been so reluctant to do so, that work has been a big deterrent, distraction and draining experience.  It's not so much that I am writing constantly -- more than I am taxed to be sharp, witty and confrontational all at the same time.  Come home with my brain drained, unable to look at a printed page.  Of course, from late spring through the summer, I must have put together a dozen thousand piece jig saw puzzles, becoming an even greater believer in using the other side of your brain, yoga like, to gain balance.  So referencing brains, let me start reconstructing what books I did manage to read over the past months with one of the last ones, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.

Think I read a review in the New York Times book review and chanced it being available already at the library.  It is a small book and a quick and engaging read.  Ms. Montgomery is a naturalist, not a marine biologist, who apparently has written several books about her world wide journeys to study animals wherever they are found.  Her octopuses were located in the Boston Aquarium.

A side note:  in July, I took our older son and his wife who hails from Texas to Boston for a Red Sox game, a visit to the aquarium (she loves penguins) in exchange for my return visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to see the glass flowers again, nigh almost 50 years later.  While the weather and seats were perfect for the game, my son re-enacted his own past Fenway behavior, reading non-stop for almost all nine innings.  He did rise to the challenge and personally guide Em through the aquarium like a volunteer tour guide.

Back to TSOAO, Sy is interested in finding out how much personality-type behaviors octopuses display, answering such questions as are they curious, do they play, are they attracted or repelled by certain humans, do they remember humans, and if these things do occur, what is there physiology-wise that gives these invertebrates the ability to do so.  As she encounters a series of them, the scientists at the aquarium have given them each a name:  Octavia, Kali, Karma, Athena.  Each has different traits: they're shy or teases or affection-starved.

I loved this book so much, I ordered one for Em as a belated souvenir of our trip.  And why did I like it.  Sy describes something called octopus time,  Even though the animals can be lightning fast quick in either darting away or sending out previously hidden arms to steal a pail of food, the water makes encounters with them languid.  There is no fear in Sy or the scientists as they immerse their arms into the top of the tanks to let the sucker rich arms wrap around them as they get to "know" each other.  Such engagements extend for long periods of time, so much so that in the silence of the exhibit or back room caring labs, they become something without fixed duration.  Zen almost, and that calmness and oneness with all nature resonates in the writing.  I too was at peace reading it.

I have another of her more recent books on order at the library, The Good Good Pig.  Her writing is for all ages with no attempt to anthropomorphize her observations.  She has a message of one world with all species sharing life.  I suppose I should also read her books on lions and tigers