CODFISH AT THE MARKET

Miraculoulsy, little Billy was unscathed by his encounter with the nomads.

But the image of the ant-hill stayed with him: just there, beside the trail, looking like its own little wasteland, and one step closer and you realize the whole area is alive with intentional activity, astonishing purpose and precision, construction of Mayan labyrinths, with secret Queens and passwords.

The password in this case had been interred with their bones. Ants have bones, you know, but they are very tiny and are instantly transmuted upon death, and are therefore very difficult to study: nobody has fixed an ant's broken leg, yet.

Ah, but then: nobody knew that business about the butterflies, either, did they, until just very recently; when was it: 1956?

The Aztecs knew it, of course: they released butterflies from their temples on the tops of pyramids, but then they forgot how to do it about 700 A.D., and nobody remembered again until just the other day, only now of course the butterflies are all gone, or just about, compared with how it was then, and anyway such knowledge doesn't really have much practical value these days.

The same is apparently true of jellyfish: they share a kind of
membrane through the pulse of ocean that moans a mucous memory of music.

All of us seem to have many membranes. Getting to know someone is watching the layers of intricate membranes shift and slide and re-arrange.

Of course we cannot see our own membranes: we feel bare-skinned and naked before the fiery eyes.

Poke a finger at a fish at the market: CODFISH.