Boston day tripping

My housemate Kathy and I went in to Boston today. I thought it might be a good distraction for her after losing her dog yesterday, plus she’s been here since September and still hadn’t seen the city. It turned out to be a beautiful day, sunny and around 70º again, although a little chillier near the water. We went first to Faneuil Hall to the food stalls to get some lunch – a rollup for me and a lobster bisque in a bread bowl for Kathy. And then we went to the New England Aquarium. I hadn’t been in years and K was happy to go there, too – having just finished her first year of vet school at Tufts, she’d looked into the possibility of doing an internship at the Aquarium, although I guess she decided otherwise.

I was particularly interested in seeing the seadragons, which were really amazing creatures. I couldn’t get a good shot of them, but you can see some here. They look like seaweeds of some sort, particularly the leafy ones, floating gently while motoring around with the tiny vibrating fins along their spines.

The penguins are always fun to watch, and I liked the crested ones with their immense eyebrows that make them look like a nutty old professor. Many penguins were sitting on the rocks above the penguin pool when we came in, grooming themselves and each other, while others swam laps below. We also saw harbor seals out front doing their own swim acrobatics, to the squealing delight of some toddlers. We didn’t get to see the sea lions, but apparently they’re quite the artistic bunch.

In the giant ocean tank that you can walk around in a spiral, the fish swim constantly counter-clockwise right past your eyes (I don’t know why counter-clockwise, but the school of 2000 fish in another tank were going the same direction). I’m sure the audience favorite is the big green sea turtle that looks like a tank but floats like the Goodyear blimp, but with way more personality.

Finally, there was the new exhibit of jellyfish. They were weird and beautiful – some looking like propulsive transparent mushrooms, some like little white hairnets with orange hairclips in the bottom, and many that glowed the color of whatever light was shone on them.

All in all, a fun day.

---

What moors her permits her to float.

From The Writer's Almanac, a poem by April Lindner:

Learning to Float

Relax. It's like love. Keep your lips
moist and parted, let your upturned hands
unfold like water lilies, palms exposed.

Breathe deeply, slowly. Forget chlorine
and how the cement bottom was stained
blue so the water looks clear

and Caribbean. Ignore the drowned mosquitoes,
the twigs that gather in the net
of your hair. The sun is your ticket,

your narcotic, blessing your chin,
the floating islands of your knees.
Shut your eyes and give yourself

to the pulsating starfish, purple and red,
that flicker on your inner lids.
Hallucination is part of the process,

like amnesia. Forget how you learned
to swim, forget being told
Don't panic. Don't worry. Let go

of my neck. It's only water. Don't think
unless you're picturing Chagall,
his watercolors of doves and rooftops,

lovers weightless as tissue,
gravity banished, the dissolving voices
of violins and panpipes. The man's hand

circles the woman's wrist so loosely,
what moors her permits her to float,
and she rises past the water's skin,

above verandas and the tossing heads
of willows. Her one link to earth,
his light-almost reluctant-touch, is a rope

unfurling, slipping her past the horizon,
into the cloud-stirring current. This far up,
what can she do but trust he won't let her go?

9:03:33 PM      trackback []