Monday March 12, 2018

A hero, and by that I mean a utopian, a eudaimonic individual, wouldn’t begin a level by making what in retrospect seems the mistake of carrying a soda to the zoo rather than a water. This figure would know better how to navigate the horns of the dilemma, or would exist beyond the contradiction as such. Why must the denatured proletarian subject’s desire to encounter a broad diversity of lifeforms terminate in the tragedy of captivity? The zoo is set up so that visitors, upon purchasing admission, donate a plastic token to the Sawfish Conservation Society and similar such organizations. I spend most of my afternoon in the zoo’s aquarium. Angelic stingrays, sharks, a moray eel. A father asks his young daughter, of the shark: “Is he happy, or is he sad?” The daughter says, with mounting resolve, “I think he’s happy.” I fuse minds with a pair of garden eels and several glowing purple jellyfish. I bear witness to the travails of a tank containing pregnant male seahorses. A giant pacific octopus swims near and reaches toward me with its tentacles. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.