Wonder of the Living

I have always loved jellyfish.

My earliest memories of them are when I was five. Growing up in Nebraska didn’t have many advantages, but one of them was the Henry Doorly Zoo, the second biggest zoo in America. I would dash through the jungle exhibits, the elephants, and the tiger cages. In the aquarium, I would race past the penguins and the glass ceiling aquarium where you walked underneath swimming sharks and sting rays. I would burst into the jellyfish exhibit.

It was a large cylinder shaded in a dark corner, a quiet place aside from the children’s screams of joy and anger. I would cement myself there and watch the jellyfish drift. I would wonder at the various sizes, from gigantic to tiny specks against the glass. I would stare at the slow movements and try to figure out which were swimming and which were simply floating on the current.

Mostly though, my mind would blank out. I would lose track of all conscious though and feel my heart beat with the thump of the jellyfish’s bells.

When I was eleven and lived in California, my mother, sister, and I would often walk along the beaches. One of my most poignant memories was seeing a whole school of jellyfish washed ashore at sunset. Without the weightlessness of the water the jellyfish’s bodies dissolved into plastic lumps. At first, they looked more like melted paper bags, or lumps of gelatin. There was something so hauntingly sad about those jellyfish marooned onshore. I couldn’t tell which were alive and which had already died. Since then, my heart bursts at the sight of a jellyfish. I find myself hyper-emotional when looking at them, working through an emotional catharsis.

After visiting the Jellyfish Exhibit at Shed Aquarium, I learned you can own your own jellyfish.

Somehow I had never thought this possible. It seemed an unrealistic dream to own jellyfish, like owning a shark or a tiger. It might be something some obnoxious, eccentric rich jerk did, but never a common sense person. But a quick look around the internet proved me wrong.

Jellyfish Art offers you jellyfish at home.  Their starter set offers you everything: a tank, 3 moon jellyfish, and 6 months of food. The tank even comes with a flashing LED light to color your jellyfish as you stare at them.

I have read through the webpage, and taking care of jellyfish doesn’t seem any more difficult than caring for a goldfish. You have to check the water salinity and clean the algae once a month, but that is it. Your jellyfish are FedExed to you, which does seem a bit harrowing, but once they survive the journey they are yours. That is all you need to do to own jellyfish, the silent meditators of the ocean.

The dream will set you back $500. Jellyfish are no longer for the eccentric, but still for the rich. Jellyfish are the latest trend for everyone else who walked through an aquarium as a child. But this doesn’t deter me. I will save my money or wait for the fad to pass. I will clean off a spot in my room and let keep the dust away. I will capture the sublime for myself.