Issue 20

Karen An-hwei Lee

Today, I wake up on the wrong side of the universe and realize, with a shock of recognition, my dear heavenly stars, I’m an octopus.

An octopus, I echo to myself, curling my eight arms with suction cups open like cherry blossoms, while stretching my melonhead fused right onto my neck. Oddly, my fondness for pickled olives has not left my palate. After crawling awkwardly on all eight arms into my pantry, then devouring a dozen or so pickled olives, I crawl into the jar, a small place with smooth glass walls where I find comfort in one type of action, namely, hiding. If you’ll please forgive me, the next few pages will consist wholly of an octopus crawling into a jar, arms curled against the body, suction cup by cup pressed like cherry blossoms in a botanical monograph as I withdraw my mantle into a glass space with one opening, my head pushed all the way inside like a world birthed in reverse. Squished in this manner, with a pair of bony stylets stuck together inside my head—my fingerling castanets, I call them—I reverberate with the humble rhythm of my coppery blue pulse.

The soft balloon of my body, the snappish beak of my orifice, a multitude of gentle mouths under my arms, and the wriggling of a tender multitude, my blooming cups, yes, everything gets tucked inside this world within a world. The opening of the jar is the size of a large plum, and my balloon goes in first, the rear end, then my head. As the two, my head and balloon, are fused together in a melonhead, it’s a straightforward feat; there’s no sophisticated choreography required. I guess this means I’m more of a contortionist than a ballet dancer, no room for a pas de deux with me.

An odd phenomenon occurs when I tuck myself inside this jar on the wrong side of the universe. After the initial shock abates, a tranquility possesses my body, lowering my blood pressure while a triptych of hearts slows down in synchrony. It’s the effect that chamomile tea or other herbal sedatives might have upon the citizens on the other side of the universe. My nine brains, percolating with sensations, dampen their electric noise; the sides of the jar, cool and smooth without nicks, hold the totality of my mind and body with reassurance. I could stay in here forever, I think to myself.

Not a bad rap for my three vascular pumps hinged like an accordion chapbook of blue flowers, triumvirate jewels in an azure vault with drops of sea dissolved therein. I am a ship with three sails, a gull with wings outspread, a volcano touched by clouds. The hearts, three daughters of my soul, flow with the ebb and tide of the ocean. If you chop out one of my hearts, I’ll still have two left. Please don’t try it, regardless of what I say. I’ll bleed to blue death before your very eyes, all of my mouths arching open in soundless agony.

With one octoeye pressed against the glass and the other inside an arm, my body curled in its own papillated flesh, I tighten my musculature to cause the jar to roll side to side, rocking a bit. My body is a pillow for itself. In this fashion, I roll across the room, under the desk where my olives are stored, and where my fruit basket sits, awaiting tea biscuits, muffins, crumpets, or spice cakes. The world is an oyster within a universe inside this jar, and the temptation to retreat into this world forever is nearly irresistible.

I roll back across the room, in no hurry to come out.

I love doing this yet can’t fully explain why. It’s not that I feel clever while tucking myself into a jar the size of a plum, nor that I feel gorgeous while hiding inside this tiny igloo. Maybe I derive a measure of satisfaction from controlling the volume of space I occupy. Or is it delight in knowing I can disappear at will, especially if I wake up on the wrong side of the universe? To be truly invisible, I guess, is to vanish while already unseen. Although I’m fond of this jar, certain activities can’t be initiated or completed while I’m hiding in it. For instance, I can’t pee. Can’t eat olives. I already ate olives today, besides. This jar held the pickled olives I ate. I love olives, but I can’t have any while I’m tucked inside this world. Hungry for more olives? Forget about it. I’m not supposed to eat much sodium, but that’s not the point right now. No olives while I’m in the jar, and none after I come out, at least, not for a little while.

Why do I love olives so?

Olives don’t give me indigestion. Oyster crackers, especially the hexagonal ones crumbled onto a salt broth, bother me more than olives. The only drawback is high blood pressure, which puts me at the risk of a stroke. However, I have no medical insurance to cover beta blockers for this, no prescriptions, and I don’t believe it’s a severe condition. So I eat as many olives as I wish, and nobody stops me. And there’s nothing apparently wrong with the olives. No detectable chemical odors, no discolorations, no obvious flaws in their skin, texture, or taste. What a bountiful variety of olives, brine-cured and lye-soaked, dunked in freshwater first, then dehydrated in the direct sun and salted, or marinated in a range of flavorful vinegars—balsamic, red wine, and apple cider—pitted or not, halved or whole. Buttery and robust in the mouth, glowing like oil lamps. What’s not to love about an olive?

One thing I do know. I am an atypical octopus. Not an aquarium octopus, I don’t have to deal with feeders or keepers, and definitely no looky-loos who press their greasy noses and fingers against the glass, or reach inside the tank to see if I’ll touch them back. I can’t stand being touched without permission, and I can’t imagine what I would do if I were imprisoned in an aquarium. The upside, I suppose, would be the provisions of raw sashimi, but I’d probably have to give up the olives unless the feeders and keepers figure out that I like them. Olives aren’t on their radar for octopuses like me.

If I were a woman on the right side of the universe, I’d go to the spa as frequently as I could afford to do so on my salary. I’d play nocturnes on my harp at midnight. I’d read the dictionary aloud to myself in a room furnished only with a chair, my solo audience. In the summer, I’d wear hand-stitched dresses of undyed cotton. Yes, I’d wear frocks and write out letters in a midsummer heat wave, sitting with bare legs crossed in a reading nook. In this other universe, I might order dress patterns on tissue paper, which would arrive folded in chapbook envelopes, deceptively thin. How could a whole pattern for a nightgown fit in this envelope? I’d wonder. Yet it would. I’d cut along the lines dotted with lavender ink, then pin the sheer, fluttering shapes to unrolled bolts of fabric I stored by a sewing machine. I’d put the remaining fabric on an ironing board while I stitched the dress, putting my foot on the pedal of the machine, running it with focused attention. As an octopus, I don’t need a wardrobe. I don’t wear clothes. I’m an octopus, not a clotheshorse. I can eat black mission figs and their shade-giving leaves for nourishment, but the proverbial fig leaf is not a special priority of mine. By the way, I favor black mission figs over petite green figs, which fare better dunked in thick coconut curry.

As an octopus, I can’t wear dresses. Do I want to wear dresses?If I don’t have to, why bother?It’s no fault of mine that I look this way, and who cares. There’s no audience. I’m wooing no one. I have no suitors. I don’t use cosmetics or henna dyes, and I never use acne suction devices or vitamin creams infused with kale and carrots. I have my own suction cups, thank you, and I exude plenty of slime. I just can’t stay out in the sun too long. I love the iridescent way the chromatophores in my skin change from gradations of emerald and phthalo to dusty rose, then cremello or oatmeal in response to my moods or the environment, or both. My iridophores are wonderful, too, shimmering while I press my body against a rock in the garden, or pass glistening slices of yellowtail sashimi up the length of a shy arm into one of my mouths, then pickled olives, while my mantle goes pomegranate red with delight, the color of grenadine. Despite this wonderland of camouflage, however, why in the world did I wake up as an octopus today?

Of course, on the wrong side of the universe, I receive no reply, not even from the sun, which delivers blanched postcards of sea light onto my sill. With my siphon, I ink the following lines:

This ocean of high tides and toxic algal blooms,

of rusting typewriters and dictographs and telegrams

and other vintage artifacts, this sea of lost letters

is a turquoise room, an immovable feast without verbs.

In sum, is this a chronicle of octopodean love,

or is it a testament to the unrequited?

Sources

Courage, Katherine Harmon. Octopus! The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea. New York: Penguin, 2013.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Reprint Edition. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017.

Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus. New York: Atria Books, 2015.