![]() ![]() Evenings and weekdays merged as I flipped through albums at the state library. In my early twenties, I worked as a picture researcher for a book publisher. There is something about old photographs that I have always found intriguing. Evocative and searching, it tells the story of a portrait that took hold of her and wouldn’t let go. The things we create, the magic they hold, and the meaning we make from them is the subject of today’s essay and prompt by the writer Alex Bertram. And like some sort of self-designed Rorschach test, I’m open to the fact that it may mean something very different to me a month from now. It’s rich and resonant, and it feels like a mirror for where I am in life, in this liminal state between sick and well. One day I think, “She’s completely ensnared.” The next I note how calm she looks she and this jellyfish seem to be peacefully coexisting. It feels like magic to create from this place, to look and look and look again, and each time, to find some new facet, a new morsel of meaning. When you allow your intuition to be the thing that leads, there’s a mysterious beauty in the creative process. What did I conclude from this? That I relate to jellyfish, and that I’m fascinated by the subconscious-what appears there, what lingers, how it connects to the events of our lives (or doesn’t). It can theoretically do this forever, so scientists consider it biologically immortal. If something bad happens to it-say it gets hurt, or sick, or even just gets old-it can revert to an earlier stage of development, transforming its own cells so that it goes from its fully grown, sexually mature state back into its fetal form, which is a colony of polyps. A species that fascinated me in particular is called the immortal jellyfish. Did you know that jellyfish have been billowing through the Earth’s waters for 600 million years? Since before the dinosaurs, before flowers or fungi? That they’ve survived five mass extinctions? They don’t have a brain or heart, just a nervous system (which felt very resonant to me, since I’m all nervous system right now), and they’re incredibly adaptable, existing in every ocean, from the coolest waters of the Arctic to the tropics to freshwater ponds and lakes. ![]() The morning after I finished the painting, I started reading about jellyfish, and what I learned was fascinating. I thought, “That’s what this pre-scanxiety feels like-like the woman floating underwater with these jellyfish.” Nothing is happening, there’s no action to be taken, yet I feel a lurking threat. The days leading up to a biopsy feel excruciatingly peaceful. When the jellyfish visions began, I had been seized by anxiety about my bone marrow biopsy next week, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was only after I was finished that I began to see an undercurrent of meaning. Otherwise it’s easy to become prescriptive or narrative in a way that flattens it-that makes it too neat. ![]() As much as I can, I try to create from that place of mystery, to trust that intuitive pull without quite understanding it. But rather than working out what it meant, I tried to remain in a nebulous headspace. When I was painting, it wasn’t clear to me how they relate to each other and to the woman in the scene-whether they are friends or foes. They seem mysterious and contradictory in that they’re so placid and seemingly peaceful, but also threatening. They’re beautiful-translucent, iridescent, even bioluminescent. So this week, I painted jellyfish, and I fell a little bit in love with them. ![]() But if it hangs around, eventually I give in. I don’t know where the vision comes from or why it persists, and I often try to ignore it. Sometimes the image appears out of nowhere, as these alien-esque sea creatures did this week. I have a recurring vision-sometimes from a memory, other times from a dream or nightmare. Since I started painting two years ago, this is how it happens. Can you tell I’ve had jellyfish on the brain? ![]()
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