Jellyfish in the City: Creation, Wonder, and the Beauty of Details

Hey there cyberspace, it's me, Left Thumb. It’s been a long time. How about we sit back, have a root beer and reminisce about old times? You know, back when Right Thumb and I collaborated on great works of art and this blog was a bastion of culture, erudite witticisms, and insightful societal critique rather than a soapbox for RT’s supercilious cinematic pretentiousness and high-minded haughtiness? Remember way back then?

I know, it’s hard.

It may, in fact, seem like an eternity ago. Rest assured, that is a common feeling after reading a RT movie review (or about thirteen of them). And I know you’ve been hearing all kinds of claptrap about my lethargy, insubordination, perfidiousness, treachery, infidelity, buffoonery and all sorts of other nasty nouns of the RT variety. But please, do recognize that in my absence you’ve only been getting one side of the story.* Yes, I may have taken an extended leave. Yes, I may have abandoned you to the clutches of a pedantic Thumb desperate for a captive audience. And I apologize sincerely. Really I do. Please realize, however, that working conditions are not always the best around here.

Take our last post, just for starters. The so-called “editor’s note”? Hogwash. Utter hogwash. You could stick a bunch of pigs in a bathtub and dump soap all over them and the situation would not be nearly so hogwashy as that editor’s note. Imagine a situation where someone sends you a blog post that is essentially complete unto itself and asks you to write your half of it. Hard to do, for starters, because it’s already fully written and you weren’t there in the initial stages of the thought process. You also haven’t watched the TNG episode in question in years. But you do your best because you always do, and add as many charming jokes as you can in addition to some of your own thoughts about the topic. Then imagine that the original author takes a bunch of your bits out without telling you and changes a bunch of other bits, and then posts it with a snarky note about how you really did almost nothing. How would you feel? And that’s but the last of a long list of such incidents, folks.

Although, in the final analysis, I guess I should be fair. If I was under threat of death (If, say, Michael Bay angled a camera at my head.**) I would have to admit that this blog would be… well… dead if it had two Left Thumbs. Very, very dead. So I will stop railing about this and talk about something constructive and wholesome. You know, something totally unlike Ayn Rand’s birth.

I took a recent trip to a large city where Right Thumb is supposedly gainfully employed with one of those new-fangled things they call “fellowships”.*** This city happens to be home to some of the best museums in the world, containing some of the most marvelous art, artifacts, and artifice to be found this side of a Nicolas Cage historical action movie with a title vaguely similar to Country’s Bounty. (I wouldn’t want to name names.) Two in particular had great impact on me: the art gallery and the natural history museum.

The art gallery was home to some very well-known works, the kind to which tourists flock and take teen-ish photos in front of, complete with “rock on” gestures and can-all-of-you-out-there-on-Facebook-believe-I-was-actually-right-here smiles. These few superstar paintings tend to funnel all the museum traffic and detract attention from, well, everything else. It struck me that this is something of a tragedy. Don’t get me wrong – I am as impressed by the A-team of Western art as anyone else. I won’t deny there’s a particular sublimity to be found in the Alba Madonna that’s not found in just any paint thrown on a canvas. And truthfully I’m as much of a culprit as anyone. (Why yes, I will trample old ladies in motorized wheel chairs if it gets me a better view of Starry Night…) But the tragedy occurs when these highlights seem to edge out and reduce to irrelevance all other works in the museum. It would be like picking out the six or seven best episodes of Star Trek and then acting like none of the others are worth even one of Michael Dorn’s nosehairs. For example, there are a number of Renaissance statues in the portico on the way to the Alba Madonna, mostly by unknown artists, but each possessing a unique beauty as envisioned by its respective creator. How many people actually stop to look at these “lesser” works, and notice the care and dedication embodied within? I know I usually don’t. But this time, breaking my usual pattern of star-sighting, I focused on a particular statue tucked away in a corner, and reflected on the great complexity of its design. At some earlier date, its sculptor had to think about every last detail I was taking for granted as I observed it; every last fold of the drape, every curl in the hair. It all mattered. It all counted.

A similar phenomenon takes place in nature, I think; or so it occurred to me at the natural history museum. Everybody loves elephants and dinosaurs. Everybody loves gigantic diamonds. These things are big, they are eminently noticeable, and they are exceptional. But what about deep ocean marine life? It’s buried under thousands of feet of water, largely unnoticed. And yet to my mind the comb jelly (pictured above) is as interesting and remarkable a creature as any. Much like Right Thumb’s heart whenever you put on something directed by the Coens, it actually lights up. It glows. It can eat ten times its weight in a day. There are untold scores of these creatures that are just down there, all the time, unnoticed, indifferent to the world – but no less astounding. Other marvels include the brittle star, the nautilus, or just any old coral for that matter. I would go so far as to venture that even grass becomes interesting if you actually look at it instead of just looking past it. When you take a step back to soak in the “whole” of nature, a splendid symphony will invariably reveal itself to you. But to witness this, you have to be willing to notice the humblest of creatures in addition to the celebrities. Velociraptors, woolly mammoths, and precious gems are a few singular sparks of interest in nature, admittedly sparks that burn particularly brightly; but if we focus exclusively on them, we miss the rest of the fireworks show.

This feeling of wonder followed me out of the museums. I couldn’t escape it! No longer could I look at a staircase and see a simple staircase; instead, it was a something that someone, somewhere, sometime had planned, preferred to other designs, and executed. Raphael shared the genius of nature; the Alba Madonna mirrors the comb jelly in its beauty, design, and sheer interestingness. But so too do we all share in the genius of Raphael every time we build something, plan something, decide on the look and make of something – even if it is a forgotten staircase in a dusty corner of a deserted cafeteria in the basement of a train station.**** One is given center stage at a premier art gallery; the other is tread upon but ignored. Does that negate its beauty? Indeed, upon inspection, it was a well-designed staircase with attractive rails and flowing contours. The fact that nobody ever notices that at a conscious level does nothing to change the effort poured into its creation.

In a city this effect is blown up to epic proportions. Now, Right Thumb may think himself a neat-necked city-slicker and look down his cold Roman nose at old-fashioned country bumpkins like myself, but I think that urban life may often have the regrettable side effect of inuring us to the beauty of the ordinary. When you encounter forty-five different staircases on the way to work, of course you aren’t going to stop and notice any of them. Heaven forbid you stop to notice a flower. But there is a particular grace that comes from the ordinary, the unnoticed – that which is made with care but is so little cared for, that which sprung from a form of creative love, but is so often unloved.

Many people acknowledge the rose is beautiful, although few enough actually stop to think about it, no matter how many times they may quote the trite truism about stopping to smell them. But even the rose is an exceptional case; it is the Alba Madonna of nature. We should not forget the simple blade of grass, the forgotten rock – or on the human level, the unnoticed sculpture in the corner of the gallery portico. The exceptionally beautiful is just that – exceptional. And if that’s the only place we can find beauty, love, and the work of God, then we are quite simply missing the forest for the tree.

Creation stems from love. God loved the world into being, loved the grass and the roses and even us into being. And in creating things we too participate in that love. What this means is that all we need to do is open our eyes and hearts to see it everywhere – not just in the usual hangouts.

> Left Thumb <

Final disclaimer: My taxonomic conscience is plaguing me, so I must confess, comb jellies are technically not jellyfish but instead belong to the clade Ctenophora. Totally different. But "Jellyfish in the City" just seemed like a better title than "Ctenophores in the City". I know. Bring out the torches and pitchforks.

* TTS only guarantees absolute truth when BOTH of us are around.

** Everything he does this to inevitably explodes.

*** I am somewhat suspicious as to what this word actually means. I think in Right Thumb’s case it may very well refer to a situation in which well-dressed men stand around in an office slapping each other on the shoulder and telling each other what “good fellows” they all are. Also prevalent is the use of the word “jolly”. Customary birthday songs only make the whole affair more jovial.

**** Why this cafeteria was deserted, I will never know. They had very very good chicken sandwiches.