A Few of My Favorite Fishy Things.

My favorite thing at the Aquarium of the Pacific is this ray. It looks like the night sky, like constellations plotted against these black wings. It's rare a metaphor is so darn literalized for you. But there it is.

And then there are the show-offs:


















These corals were so magnificent, so technicolored, that I thought I might still be at Disney. But they are challenging, too. The only thing I can think to compare them to are the riotous bloom of flowers, but they're decidedly not plants. They're animals. So, I guess bright feathers are a more apt reference point. But to think about these underwater gardens as creatures, rather than vegetation, is hard. It takes re-training of the way our eye inputs information to our brain. Breaking off a branch to display on our coffee tables (which is of course illegal) is akin to taxidermy, rather than floral arranging.