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by
Susan Casey
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April 24 - May 7, 2024
In the deep, there are creatures that breathe iron and creatures with glass skeletons and creatures that communicate through their skin. Some of its creatures can turn themselves inside out. They might have two mouths or three hearts or eight legs. Or their bodies might consist of a thousand little bodies, a coordinated army. At least one deep-sea creature squirts yellow light. Some have see-through heads. Even the most ethereal among them can handle pressures that would crush a Mack truck.
our survival depends on the ocean. The more we’ve delved downward, the more we’ve had to revise our ideas about how the earth operates, how the climate behaves, what we can learn from the distant past, our place in the overall scheme of life—even our definition of life. Now it’s apparent that nature runs as a massively interconnected system, with the deep sea as its motherboard. Yet even as we tinker with the machinery in potentially irreversible ways, we have only the foggiest notion of how it all works. The deep buffers our excess carbon (at least so far), drives the ocean’s circulation (and
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We always want more, but descending into the depths is a process of subtraction. Subtract air, light, weather, horizon. Subtract ego. Subtract human illusions of supremacy and control. When those things are gone, others can be added: real humility, new visions of beauty, altered perceptions, expressions of life that include unfamiliar schemes.
In the abyss, you don’t glimpse the mystery—you enter it, and your consciousness is the only fixed point. Subtract time and you’re left with presence. In the deep, you lose your bearings and you find yourself.