octological

I spent about seventy minutes with an octopus today.

I have this assignment for my acting class, where I have to do a pantomime of an animal. I chose an octopus. Everyone keeps telling me I don't have enough arms, but we'll see how it turns out.

I went to the zoo, checked out the octopus, found out its feeding time. Went back 15 minutes before feeding time. He was still curled up in the outside corner of the tank, but at about five till he got a lot more animated, extending arms and contracting them, generally perking up. When the feeding crew (just one feeder and a narrator, really--he only ate 2 shrimp) assembled everyone to watch, he began putting on a show, spreading out so we could see his suckers, balooning the webbing between his tentacles. The first shrimp he took off the skewer with a tentacle; the second he balooned himself around. (For those who don't know, an octopus's mouth is on his underside, at the spoke as it were of his tentacles.) After a while, the show ended, the children left, and everyone was tired of the octopus, having stood in one place for ten whole minutes.

This is when I moved in for a closer look. He was back in his corner, pretending not to watch the world go by, curling and unfurling and waving his tentacles at a rather leisurely pace. So I started matching my breath to his, as his gills flared and mantle inflared and deflated. Then I started copying his tentacle motions, first with my hands and then with my arms as well. He became much more active when I did this. After a while I was doing this strange octopus-motion around the outside of his tank and he was following me. We were totally improv-ing off each others' movements. Somewhere along the way he turned from his previous tan shade to red, matching my coat. He began showing off after a while, as if trying to figure me out, see who I was and what I could do. I saw the way he moved along vertical surfaces, walked along the bottom, swam by propulsion, perched on an outcropping. I took the coat off, and the texture of his skin changed from slightly bumpy to ridged, matching the texture of my sweater. The coolest thing of all was that so much of the time I had eye contact with him as we watched each other, trying to figure each other out. And even though we were not true peers (because I could leave and he was secured in his aquarium) we related to each other as one very different being to another, totally fascinated.

I love his sense of play. He's at least as intelligent as a greyhound. His problem-solving and curiosity were totally in action. I had so much fun playing with him, as much fun as I have playing with a dog.

After an hour of dancing like an octopus in full view of other zoo patrons, I felt ready to leave. The hard thing about bringing it into acting class (aside from that whole skeleton issue) is getting over the fact that I'm performing. I am totally cool with exhibitionism (as anyone who has seen me dance in any sort of club or zoo setting might have inferred) but getting up in front of people and saying "now is the time when you watch me" scares the shit out of me. Weird, huh? I guess it's a control issue. Exhibitionism is more like, "I'm going to do this and don't care if you see. I'll even dare you to watch." But performing is like someone daring me to meet some idea in their head. At least that how it feels when I'm nervous.

I am the active one. I am the one acting. That puts me in control. I am in control. I own that time. And I rock that octopus pantomime I have the pleasure of doing on Monday. And I'm not going to break that leg (no bones, remember). I'm going to fucking sever and regrow it.