Metronomics

A medusa, bell contracting. Then another, then ten million — a bloom spreading across the surface of the Adriatic, each one pulsing in loose agreement with the water around it, no signal passing between them except the current itself. No brain coordinating this. No heart keeping time. Ninety-five percent water, playing water's own rhythm back to the sea.

The ocean is enormous and mostly this — life as vibration held in solution, receiving and broadcasting, each organism a temporary intensification of the wave. On land we carry the same ocean, the same salt, the same interior tide, the same readiness to synchronize with any rhythm that shares a wall.

What are we playing? The medusa asks every time the bell opens. The ocean answers. They already know.

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