“
The soul should always stand ajar. ”
I suppose I must be one of the last people to see My Octopus Teacher, the Academy Award-winning documentary about the chance encounter and emerging relationship between a diver on the edge of himself and an octopus living her life in the Great African Seaforest.
And I'll tell you why: octopi give me the wiggins. I could not conceive of how anyone could feel sweet regard for those squishy, creepy sea weirdos. I love the sea and come from a long line of sea folk, from Greece to Ireland to Wales to Texas. More recently, I've discovered I love to swim. Many of you who read my piece last year have emailed to say that it inspired you to jump into pools, too. Huzzah! Maybe we'll need to have a Writers Who Swim retreat one of these days. But sea creatures? Unless they are whales or sea otters or something like that, something not fishy (or sharks...shudder), then I simply could not be bothered. In fact, I experienced real aversion each time I saw an octopus.
One thing writing that post about swimming brought into relief for me (it's aptly titled "On Surprising Myself") is that a strange trend has started appearing in my life: If I say I would never, not if you paid me, do something....the universe calls my bluff.
Swimming, yes, but also living in Minnesota again, and all kinds of things - including, as it turns out, falling head over heels for an octopus. I really must watch what I say.
I've been feeling rather tender lately for various reasons, so I expect the Netflix algorithm caught me at just the right moment. The trailer came on - I'd never seen it before, but vaguely remember characters in a Helen Hoang book bonding over this film. I was transfixed. Oh my gosh, are octopi actually....badasses? I may now be an ethical vegan, but that doesn't mean I feel gooey toward all creatures great and small. But seeing her in the surreal beauty of the Great African Seaforest in South Africa, the raw emotion on the face of Craig Foster, the diver who became her friend...I had to watch this thing. It was absolutely, profoundly beautiful. I don't want to say any more than that in case you haven't seen it.
As the credits rolled - me, sobbing - I thought about how sad it would have been if I'd been stuck in my resistance to that which is alien to me.
I would have totally missed out on this magic! I know from experience what there is to be gained when you open yourself up. I wouldn't have my familiar, Circe, if I still was afraid of cats and believed the myths about them. I wouldn't have discovered that French bulldogs were the sweetest - I know they're having a moment, but for me it took housesitting in Lyon, France with no choice but to live with a Frenchie to discover this. Their drooling and squished faces had turned me off, but now all I see is the love.
Compared to this octopus, I am a basic bitch. How awesome is it to not see yourself as above other creatures? And what can that realization, that empathy, that connection bring to the page for us as writers?
She is fully embodied - 2,000 suckers help her somatically experience her entire life in the sea. What would it look like to be fully embodied in your writing? To get out of your head and into your heart, your limbs, all those places of contraction inside you? (I love the classes at Embody Lab for training in somatics and often find that the writers I work with can benefit from deeper instruction in one of the many somatic modalities they offer. No affiliation, just a fan.)
She is curious.
She is courageous.
She is playful.
She is willing to take risks to connect.
She pivots as needed in a sometimes (often) hostile environment.
She has a cave to retreat to, and feels no shame in going to it when she needs solitude, feels anxious, or is scared.
She is so creative!
She can blend into her environment, become the space she inhabits.
She is strange and beautiful and fully her self.
She's clever.
She uses what her body offers to make the best of the life she has.
She is singular, despite being a "common" octopus.
I'm curious - what can I, you, we all learn as creatives from this wonderfully artistic creature? And what can we learn about opening up to resistance, aversion, and discomfort with the unknown?
How can we deepen our capacity for empathy and revise the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, our likes and dislikes, what we could NEVER do?
This is a picture of one of my soul homes, Grand Marais, MN. This Instagram account (not the one pictured, though I adore Dappled Fern) is my weighted blanket and one of the only reasons I lurk on that platform from time to time.
This winter has been a tough one for me. Maybe for some of you, too. Amazing things are happening - my adult literary thriller is on sub! I got into the Master's in Social Work clinical program at St. Catherine University! I'm in the UCLA Mindfulness Facilitator program and loving it. And so much more.
But I needed some apricity and my mind is shifting to hope - in myself, in our species' ability to protect the vulnerable of this planet, in the power of story.
I hope this wonderful octopus and the man whose heart she stole give you a good dose of it.
Two more bits of nourishment for you:
This podcast episode on the power of awe.
This piece written by the co-director of My Octopus Teacher.
Here's to your curiosity and courage and the ways in which the tentacles of your imagination spread into the world...🐙
Yours in doing right by the miracle,
