The Jelly Epiphany

Eight years ago this 4th of July, I took acid. During my adventure, I somehow managed to find my way a top a twenty story high building overlooking a big great massive silver bean that serves no real purpose other than to make you realize we can do shit just for the hell of it.

The people below us all looked so tiny, so insignificant, so unaware of me, the overlooker, the one who could judge, or not judge, or simply watch idly as they lived their life in celebration of a holiday, where humans gave their lives for a future they would never see.

I lay on this rooftop, some 200 feet above the ground, edging closer to the simultaneously massive yet relatively miniscule drop, parallel only to the galactic yet insignificant thing we get to call our individual existences.

As I edged my head out over the side of the building, I couldn't help but admire the fact that all it takes is me making a mistake, to plunge into my certain demise. I'm not talking about suicide, you have to remember, I'm peaked on a full blown acid trip (mind you, I don't know if you've ever done the drug, but in my case, it heightens my already euphoric state of mind). I'm talking about the awesome fragility that is the thread by which we all dangle.

As I contemplated all of these things together in an eternal second, it occurred to me how beautiful the jelly fish is. The jelly egg, is released into a vast, deep, dark, unknown. It's mission is to roam with the single purpose of landing on a surface to which attach itself and form what it's called a planula. These are the beginnings of what will turn into what I can only describe as a fish plant, except it's neither a fish, nor is it a plant. This polyp is essentially a flower looking organism made up of many many clones, which will eventually separate, but not before the absolute perfect conditions, combining saline levels, ph levels, temperature, and the precise amount (scientific term) of fuck it, why the fuck not. These clones, known as ephyras, will now move in to the next stage in life, puberty if you will... as if their entire existence up to now hasn't been weird as shit already, but off they go. After eating plenty of whoknowwhatsits that tend to be abundant in the primordial soup of the unknown, these bad boys and girls will find a jelly dame, or jelly gentleman caller (gotta keep it inclusive in 2017) and make babies... and by that I mean, they'll actually just release gametes into the ocean in the hope that shit'll get fertilized and blah blah blah you know the rest.

So why this on going rant only to throw away the end? Because the end was never the point. All the while, these beautiful grocery store plastic bags of the ocean live without ever knowing they're alive. In fact, i can say with absolute certainty, that they won't know when they die either.

Let's get back to the acid trip, I want to remind you that I wouldn't have had this unbelievable realization had I not been blasted on acid 200 feet above ground. If they don't know when they become alive, and are unaware of being alive, are they ever even alive? Scientifically, yes (they eat, they shit, they fuck [figuratively], they protect themselves, and they react to their environment, 5 things you gotta do to be considered alive), but who the hell are WE to say they are, just because we get to be aware of our own existence. So if they aren't alive, are they Dead? If they aren't aware of being alive, and couldn't possibly be aware of their encroaching death, will they ever die? And when they are dead, will they ever know that they are dead? Scientifically, they'll be pretty fuckin dead (see parenthesis some sentences back). But acidly metaphorically speaking, likely no. Jellies (not to be referred to as jelly FISH, due to a shortage of fins) live in an everlasting state of being. They remain both existing and inexistant.

To be fair, I would someday come to learn that there is in fact a jelly, capable of immortality. But not by our definition, you know, the boring bullshit Hollywood version where you grow into a glistening perfect specimen, often with pointy ears, never to grow old, shitty and crotchety, but just to remain beautiful and glistening I guess.

No the immortal jelly will live it's life through all of the aforementioned stages, regardless of how easy or difficult they are, all the way through to right before they die, at which point they will magically reverse the otherwise very human direction of time, back through its stages of life, all the way to a polyp, to start all over again, on the likelihood that it will live a mathematically precisely different existence than every single other time it has forced itself through this grueling process we call life. And it does it so, without any positive or negative outlook, free of the burden of consciousness. It just lives, over and over again. To experience all the horrors, and all the wonders of life, until much like an immortal elf, it dies in battle, eaten by a larger poor bastard just trying to get around in life.

If you've stuck around this long, you'll have read the thoughts of a man who's been diagnosed with testicular cancer, hours before having to be carted into a room full of other (heroic, much more accomplished than I) poor bastards trying to get around in life, tasked with figuring out how to give me another shot at life - for lack of a better description, in essence, "how to divert me back into a polyp."

The thing about my type of cancer, is that i don't know how bad it is, and you can't know until your testicle is severed from your body and subjected to a number of mutilations and tortures that will force it to spit out the god damn bitter truth. But as the jelly does, so shall I, who gives a shit... I'm alive right now, I'll always be alive, through memories, through science, through the beautiful nature of reality. Or you can argue that I was never alive to begin with, but I reiterate, as the jelly fish who can't possibly give a shit about what humans think, I'm something, made of something older than me, in a place as old as time. I don't know how long I'll live, never really did, but I do know that I intend to stick around for a good long while.

If you write me, I don't know that I'll get back to you. But I'll do my best. I don't know when I'll write again, but i intend to. It's easy to forget about life when it's so abundant, I know I have sometimes, but I certainly cannot now. And I hope you can remember that you too, have life, lots of it. Smile, not because I said so, but because you can. Feel, not because I said so, not because it's hard, or easy, but because you can. And above all, live, not because you have no choice, but because you get to.

With unconditional love,

Me.