Page 7 Ocean tunnel and plankton
"I saw a baby jelly fish (medusa of Obelia), its vibrant body beating with inherited pulse from aeons  past, and in its midst - a tunnel of all its ancestors back through time... and me, my face, down there - somehow entwined within their legacy!" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The past was judging me... deciding if I was to live or die!
 
 
 
 
Down the tunnel I travelled, followed by a jury of Ocean Plankton, to pass me by - to  touch me momentarily - their ocean coldness against my blooded flesh; their alien tendrils caressing my humanity... not cruelly, no... more as if to probe our differences and our likeness. One-by-one they came...
 
Polyps - their tentacles exploring my body! 
 
  

Polyps - tentacled microscopic animals from freshwater sources and the ocean - include hydra and moss animals (Bryozoans) - with the latter seen here above.

 
Sea Mussel Larva behaving like Rotifers - their whirling cilia vibrating against my skin. 
 
 
 

Sea mussel larva behaving like Rotifers - wheel animals, microscopic creatures living in ponds and the ocean - many with cilia around the mouth which seem to spin like windmills.

 
 Jellyfish - their pulse matched by mine. 
 
 
 
Medusa - new-born jellyfish so tiny, so transparent, almost invisible under a microscope until you spot its tell-tale  movement: a vibrant thing... spring lamb of the sea maybe?
 
Comb Jellies - shining like beacons to light the tunnel. 
 
 
Comb Jellies - bright shining beacons in the sea with comb-like tentacles. 
Study this microscopic life-form by clicking here! 
Bacillaria paxillifer - the ocean's miniature puzzle. 
 
Study this microscopic life-form by clicking here! 
The 'carpenter's rule' diatom: 
Bacillaria paxillifer, sliding, mysteriously through the water.
 

Starfish Larvae - microscopic ocean babies 
 

 
Starfish in all their different shapes, sizes, and stages... like a galaxy of dark stars within an endlessly drifting  
deep-blue sky. 
 
 
 
There was something else in the tunnel with us... not microscopic... no - not small at all. It was a powerful beast: a stingray! As it approached, I wondered if it was to be my executioner - summoned, like some evil henchman to do the bidding of the small ? 
 
 
 I still realised all this was just a drowning dream... or was it?
 
Suddenly - we were all one: the creatures of the sea and me! Their senses and mine, moulded, combined, a single entity flowing through the sea... drifting through our pasts... and our destinies. And I knew what my fate would be! As I felt the suffocating sea drive the last wisp of air from my lungs, I knew how it would end... and why it should be this way. My dream faded to the deepest black of ocean bed and lost awareness while the ocean and its cast of living things, filled my mind with two final images - to tell a truth I had not suspected...  

 
 

            "...and I saw what they could see - as they looked with their alien senses...  
              into the deepest part of me... to see my womb with child - yet to breathe and 
              yet to be!"

 
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  (c) Vanessa Summers, Larry Legg, & Lightscape 1998  
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