"Eternity is not remote, it is here beside us." — Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

§8 — Aloha World

A dolphin, belly to belly with another at the surface, bodies arced into a continuous loop — each one receiving what the other extends, and extending what the other receives, the circuit running without interruption, without beginning, without hierarchy. Joy and its completion. John Lilly — neuroscientist and isolation tank inventor — spent years in the Virgin Islands trying to teach dolphins English, eventually understanding that the conversation was already happening and he was the one arriving late. Their sonar output registers in frequency ranges that alter human consciousness. The leap out of the water: gratuitous, repeated, apparently for the sheer reason that both sides of the surface exist and the dolphin knows it.

Where is the edge? The dolphin surfaces, looks around, dives back, and the question dissolves.

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