OCEANS

Deli coffee, the 11 am matinee: on the early side, it’s true, to contemplate the bulk of the arbitrary world. But time and tide. Disney and half of France at the helm, while Remington Steele rhapsodizes on the “vahst” power and glory. Knock knock, who’s there, an otter, an otter who, an otter nature documentary begins in wonder and ends in dread. They travel together like a shark and staccato violins.

Who let the cod out? Life’s revolting where it teems: phalanx of spider-crabs on the crawly, crunchy march. The wars they wage stage the age-old conflict between narrative and pure event. When you can take no more, luckily, humpback whales burst and breech, an orca grabs sashimi, a dolphin does a 720 for kicks. Litany of signs: cormorant and narwhal, urchin and ray. The nets of men are but a too-literal, redundant reminder of Necessity, who wields her own and cinches it tight. Wouldn’t you feel that strict wayness of the world, too, to open your eyes and say, okay, this is what I am, a clownfish, a hive-minded sardine, or some thing whose whole deal is to resemble a piece of seaweed all day.

And those penguins are too much, just like funny little people. The child sees a photograph of a tugboat in her picture-book. She goes to the toybin and gets her plastic tugboat, brings it to the book, and smacks toy against photo, as if to join, by the force of the blow, signifier and signified. Theorist of screens, she seeks a portal, a rip in the fabric through which understanding might for once unstoppably pour. So why stick a thumb in the fault? Wonder and dread, it’s one cracked dike pointlessly fixed between two vastnesses both utterly empty, entirely whole.