Octopus as Pure Idea

I was deeply wounded the day my parents left for the big sky and never came back. On that day, a heart-shaped hole in my chest appeared, opened up, and started bleeding. Don’t ask how or why; it’s too painful to talk about.

The longer I go without discussing it, the bigger the hole grows, and the more it aches. If I could figure out how to express what happened as a story, it would be the first step to my recovery, or so my counselor says. He wants me to speak up more, communicate what I’m thinking and feeling. I’ve avoided writing about it, though that’s not a good way of coping.

I live in this big two-story colonial with a cat and a swimming pool for company. On clear nights like this one, I sit outside the house by the glow of my laptop and stare at a blank screen.

Tonight, the pool is worrying me.

Smeared over with stars, the sky is blackest midnight. Holy glitter is what I call it; ancient faces guarding us. Their light is reflected on the water, and because it’s sacred, I approach on tiptoe, kneel down by the water’s edge.

What concerns me is that the glitter is shifting inside the water, deeper than the stars can transmit their light. I skim my palm over the water. Some of that sparkly shimmer catches on my skin.

A shadow passes in the depths, fluid, enormous, and undulating.

My heart thrums.

I yank my hand away and examine my fingertips. The glimmer sparkles, then fades.

I pull myself up to stand and scratch my head. That shadow shouldn’t be there. My cat, Bumpkus, headbutts my shin and prowls around between my legs, weaving a figure eight in pawprints. He stops by the side of the pool and stares down inside, fascinated by that glitter.

The sparkles go deep. Real deep, straight down the sides of the pool to the bottom, and they follow in the wake of that enormous shadow. It’s creating them and depositing them behind, trailblazing a path to nowhere.

I pick up the pool net resting by the fence and hold it out alongside me, a knight with my lance, ready to joust. Whatever’s invaded my pool, whether friend or foe, will have to reckon with the net.

The pole slides into the water. I swish it back and forth, a warning.

I’m coming for you.

The shadow hesitates, allowing me a closer look. I squint, tilt my head this way and that. He’s got eight meaty tentacles and a bulb-shaped head with two gigantic, expressive eyes, both fixed on me. The creature’s gaze gloms onto the hole in my chest and then, I swear to God, it blinks one eye, a slow wink.

I bring the net in for a quick swipe; he’s right there if only I can catch him, but then he’s not. The net comes up, dripping.

I try again, and a third time, chasing the shadow around the pool. The bastard’s cunning, and he escapes me every time. Don’t ever call an octopus stupid. They’re brilliant and agile.

I’m out of breath, and it’s getting cold. Bumpkus bats the water with his paw. He meows at me and I scratch him behind the ears. 

I toss the pool net, and it lands with a clatter on the cinder blocks by the fence. Underneath my pajamas, the bandages have slipped down. I clutch my chest, and warm, sticky blood oozes through my fingers.

I’ll bleed out if I don’t get help or find more bandage material to stuff inside, to dampen the flow. With the flimsy, damn scab torn off, the hole throbs.

I fall to my knees, teeth chattering, and gather the old, dirty bandage in my hands, unwind and rewind it, preparing to jam it in the wound. I hate doing it this way, but what choice do I have?

When I bleed, I bleed hard and fast. There’s no time to run indoors for clean bandages or signal anyone for help.

I’m halfway done jamming the bandage into the hole when the whoosh happens.

The octopus rises out of the water, his skin a pearlescent glow in the light of the stars. His great, bulbous head clears the surface, and his tentacles fan out beside him, writhing, keeping him afloat.

What do you want? Somehow, I imagine he can hear me. Why are you here?

He sings. I swear to you, an octopus can sing. Sort of like an angel, but more like a bird. There’s no way to describe it, other than spine-tinglingly beautiful. I don’t want to hear anything else, as long as I live and breathe. It catches in my head and lingers there, long after he’s done holding the final note.

After he finishes, he reaches inside himself with one of his giant tentacles and tears something out. A big gob of bloody, beating flesh; an organ crusted over with barnacles, draped in garlands of seaweed.

The octopus has torn out his heart – wait, doesn’t he have three? I think I remember that from high school biology – and he’s shifting it along the length of one tentacle; it’s bouncing merrily from one suction cup to another, and lands on the outermost tip closest to me.

The creature is offering his heart. He tore out his heart for me.

“Take this,” he says, “and eat.”

I reach out to touch the heart, but pull back. No, it’s not for me to take, let alone taste. I can’t eat octopus heart.

“I am it,” he says. “I am Pure Idea.”

My ideal story, waiting to be put on paper. Why hadn’t I considered it before? I was too caught up in the sparkle of stars, the menace of shadow, and using the pool net to joust. Less fight, more submission, I tell myself. That’s the way to harness creativity.

I snatch at the offered heart, but my fingers slide off the wriggling muscle. His hold’s too strong through that suction cup. I grasp it with both hands and pull harder, digging in my heels.

The octopus sinks below the surface, taking the heart with him, yanking it out of my grasp.

No!

Now that the idea’s in my head, I don’t want to let go, but I’m not strong enough. The tentacle with the heart dips beneath the water and is gone.

I stomp my foot. NO!

A stray tip of tentacle floats upward in the moonlight, waving me inside the pool.

Well, this is it, then. My big story idea, waiting for me to take the plunge into unknown waters and swim…with an octopus, a spiritual leviathan, who’s torn out his heart for me. What am I supposed to do about that?

I circle the pool and stand at the top of the steps, gripping the metal railing with one hand, covering the hole in my chest with the other. The old bandage is soaked. Blood drips between my fingers, dots the water, swirls into nothingness.

There’s lights down there where he is, my octopus. Thousands, probably millions, of twinkling yellow, pale green, and rose-tinted lights, mirroring the stars.

It’s do or die, I tell myself; the hole’s barely plugged, and if the octopus is as savvy as I think he is, he’s got the answer. He’s got all the answers I need. ‘Pure Idea,’ and then some.

I take it one step at a time, letting myself adjust to the water level as it rises up my legs, inch by inch. It’s warm, so warm I could bathe in it, cleanse my hole in it, snort it, swallow it, live in it.

I long for it. I want to breathe it. That warm water, essence of octopus, baptizing my lungs, transforming my millions of grape-cluster air chambers into gills, my limbs into graceful tentacles.

Take this, and eat.

The voice is his. I’d know it anywhere, even though he’s only sung to me once.

I duck my head under the surface without taking a breath, and I wait. I listen, and I watch. There is nothing frightening in this place of perfect stillness. Even my lungs are calm, restful. My entire body is at ease.

The water tends my lungs for me, if they’re still lungs and not swim bladders. I concentrate one way and drift higher; another way, and I sink lower.

But it’s the lights that fascinate me most, floating in iridescent lines around me like ropes of crystals on a chandelier. The creatures producing the lights approach, a bevy of jellyfish-like forms, translucent umbrellas that billow and fold in on themselves for locomotion.

They come in all sizes, their colors speaking to their personality; the blues shy, reds the most bold.

I was mistaken earlier, thinking the octopus created the lights. These phosphorescent delights are his royal train, following him wherever he swims, illuminating his movements.

And now they’re surrounding me.

Me.

I glance down at the hole in my chest and poke my fingers inside. The sensation is there, fingers brushing flesh, but the ache is receding, unless I’ve forgotten to pay attention to it. No, no, it definitely hurts less, and only a thin trail of blood leaks out.

The water swirls around me; I sway gently in response.

The octopus has come.

He extends one tentacle and touches it to the edge of my hole. With a second, he holds up the beating heart.

I stretch out my hands and take the heart from him. Thub-dup. Thub-dup. I close my eyes and absorb the beat, seek to find the words hiding behind it, the meaning.

If the octopus is Pure Idea, my answers live here.

I press my ear to the heart and listen. It beats steadily on; the undulation of his tentacles gently streaming nearby is the only backdrop.

I don’t so much hear anything as feel the weight of the heart in my hands, tracing its contours with my fingers. Underneath the layers of seaweed and heavy barnacle crust, I count four chambers, drift over the aortic arch, trace the spidery coronary arteries as they snake around front.

Something isn’t right. This heart doesn’t belong to a cephalopod; it’s mammalian in origin. Human, to be exact.

The heart is not his, it’s mine!

I drop the heart and float backward, my hair drifting around my face.

The octopus considers me, with no judgment. He doesn’t seem surprised or disappointed.

My heart sinks to the bottom of the pool and rests there. Within moments, the phosphorescent jellyfish surround it, fluttering in excitement.

What have I done? I’ve released the one thing that belongs to me in this strange new environment where swimming is breathing and holes in my chest no longer spasm in pain.

I dive to the bottom of the pool, racing to the rescue of my own heart. Moments later, it’s mine, I’m cradling it in my hands, the constant beat threading its way through my fingers, into my veins, echoing inside the gaping hole in my chest.

I give it a squeeze, a delicate version of a hug. Then, sizing it up carefully, I move it toward my gaping hole and stuff it inside. That’s where it belongs. It’s made to fit and to work where I put it.

But it doesn’t.

It’s too big and clunky, with all the extra layers of debris caked on the surface. If I remove all that garbage, the heart will fit. So I tear off the seaweed in great, slimy handfuls and pry at the barnacles with my fingertips, loosening their cement-like hold.

As soon as I do, I realize my mistake.

The gaping hole in my chest is hemorrhaging faster than before. My heart beats strong in my hands – thub-dup, thub-dup! – but the rest of me has reacted strangely to its transformation.

Blood pours out of my chest, thick, red, and viscous, creating a dark curtain around me. I grip my heart, tight so it can’t get away, but my vision’s clouding, darkness creeping in from all sides. Watery light narrows to a pinpoint and I’m heavy, weightless, sinking.

                                                          #

When I rouse, I’m cradled in the muscular tentacles of the octopus. The surface of the water glitters above me, the phosphorescent jellyfish ballooning one direction, then another, criss-crossing past one another in graceful flight.

Pure Idea, I think. Is that his name? Or only what he signifies? I am ready to receive you. Feed me my heart.

His eyes loom large inside his head, and they rove over the surface of me, taking my measure. I’m simply glad to be alive, here, with him. He can think what he wants. He doesn’t terrify me.

“Are you ready to eat?” he asks.

Yes. I baby-bird with my mouth.

He continues to support me with two tentacles, and with the others, he lifts up my heart: clean of debris, raw, lustrous, and beating hard.

With the tip of one tentacle, he tears off a tiny piece of my heart – I can feel the effect inside my chest! A tiny stab of pain, and then it’s gone –hooks it in his grasp, and drops it into my mouth.

I chew, then I gulp.

This is the sweetest thing I have ever tasted. It’s memory and image, caking my tongue with words, loosening my tongue, shivering across my vocal cords. I’d try to say something, but I’m ravenous. My stomach growls; I’m starving.

With one glance, the octopus understands. I want more.

He feeds me another piece, and a third after that, taking care not to section off too much of my heart at any one time. He is cautious, methodical, and deliberate, feeding me only as much as I need and can handle, no more.

I swell with love for the octopus.

He is bringing me back to life; I am revived. My gaze travels down to the hole in my chest, no longer a deep, heart-shaped wound. The hole’s been filled in; the tissue is white, shiny, smooth as silk beneath my fingers.

While I tried to replace my heart wholesale, barnacles and all, he is as wise as the ancients. He returned my purified heart to me in pieces, painful at times, but never to the degree I couldn’t bear it.

Wise, solemn octopus.

I stare into the profound depths of his eyes. I never want to be without him.

What can I offer him in return?

I pat the scar on my chest, mournful.

He lifts my chin with his tentacle. “Swim,” he says. “Do it now.”

I have to trust that he’ll always be here, even if I did all the taking and gave him nothing in return.

I hesitate for a moment, unsure about leaving him, then launch toward the other side of the pool, paddling hard. He follows behind, skimming under me with great, sweeping motions of his tentacles. I bank off the wall and head to the other side, my octopus trailing beneath, accompanied by his retinue.

Above us, the water glistens like sunlight on stained glass, shafts of sunlight beaming through. Night has passed, it’s daylight outside. I spent an entire night with the octopus, breathing underwater, recovering my heart.

Joy surges, and as I yearn to give voice to the whoop within my chest, the octopus comes to a halt beneath my feet. I float down to meet him and catch him about the neck, giving him a hug. He grips me around the waist with a tentacle, and before I know it, I’m perched on his head and he’s thrusting me above water.

I balance there while he floats, churning the water into a spume.

My laptop is on the table where I left it, and surrounding me, bounded by the four walls of the pool and illuminated by the golden sun, is a tableau of striking, shimmering, vibrant color.

I can’t imagine why I ever thought of the octopus as a shadow, lurking in the depths of the pool to devour me.

He and his fantastical creatures healed me; his world teems with life.

“Thank you,” I stutter.

Behind my ribs, Pure Idea beats.