i am the octopus

I once saw a video of an octopus being put into a tank with three to four foot sharks. I believe this happened because the the octopus’ tank needed cleaning or repair but I cannot be certain. The narrator speculates as to the octopus’ safety and concludes that it should be sufficiently camouflaged to survive amidst the sharks.

After several shark carcasses are found someone does a little night-time camera work. The octopus – legs twirling, propelling, spiraling – finds a niche at the bottom of the tank. It is reddish brown in colour and unlike a child’s smooth drawing of an octopus, real octopi are covered in what I can only call wavering flaps of skin that make them otherworldly and entirely alien and their movements mesmerizing.

Within moments, a shark swims by and all eight limbs reach out, bind the shark, immobilize it and pull it in to be devoured.

And they were worried about the octopus…

I found this video empowering. I liked that a creature whose physicality seems the living embodiment of uncertainty – moving in many directions at once, never truly still, twisting back on itself in never ending loops – had been underestimated.

In a society where our language has designated worldly success as being under the purview of the “sharks”, particularly when it is brutally won and of the kind that has often made me shrink from the world, I am comforted – even bolstered – by the idea that the octopus can eat the shark.

Also, at this time in my life I feel pulled apart most days by all the roles I must play. So, in the spirit of the octopus, I have divided myself into eight categories: Woman, Mother, Writer, Friend, Mate, Sister, Daughter & Critic.

So.
Welcome.
I will try not to eat you.
But if I want to.
I promise you.
You won’t see it coming.

Sulya