OUTTAKES: CANNIBALS

This outtake is actually from my earlier book, THE FRAGILE EDGE. A scene with the crown jellyfish made it into the final cut. The shipwreck musings did not.

"As always when underemployed at sea, I imagine which of my boat mates would make the best eating if we suddenly found ourselves adrift and starving, only to conclude the crown jellies would be tastier than any of us. As succulent as cactus. Though light on nutrition."

The fantastical painting above is by Julie Speed, whose work I discovered serendipitously online. I'm now a devoted fan. She's also got a delightfully subversive show opening April 1st at the Gerald Peters Gallery, 24 E 78th St, New York, NY, that's up for a month. Check it out.

 

The moon jellyfish below (relatives of crown jellies) are from here.

OUTTAKES: OCTOPUS BIRTHDAY

I have twice written a long and slightly comic love letter to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the people I've had the good fortune to spend underwater time with there. A version of this tale has now been cut from two books. Sadly. I still harbor hopes it will find a printed home someday, somewhere. Here's a snippet:

"For the last hour, scores of baby octopuses as clear as rice noodles and no bigger than my fingernails have been hatching from egg casings attached to the mooring line and washing onto the dive step and crawling aboard in confusion. Feeling they deserve a better start, I have been collecting them from the decks and placing them back in the waves. Joining me in the small but seemingly important task is Nicola Chatham, an artist who, like me, is aboard Foundation One courtesy of the Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation, whose founders believe that painters and writers also have a role to play in protecting the deep blue home." 

Photo: Dana Point Ocean Institute

OUTTAKES: THE BACKSTORY

 
As usual in writing a book, a lot of good stuff ends up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. This outtake was hard to let go of, more so because I didn't write it:

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dirge Without Music