Ode to the Ocean, Who Remembers 20 Years

A new study led by scientists from the University of Liverpool analyzed the “memory” of the North Atlantic and created a new framework for understanding ocean memory. They discovered that temperature fluctuations persist for a full 10 to 20 years, which is much longer than current models predict. – Darren Orf, “The Ocean Can Remember 20 Years, Study Says”

I am sixty percent water and tired. The ocean holds almost allof earth’s water and never stills. Even in its darkness,the galaxy’s wetter, no less mysterious twin records orbitsand sends objects hurtling through its space. How large andcavernous that aquatic brain must be to remember how

to retain its energy for twenty years. All this rememberingwithout a calendar. All this remembering withouta single sticky note. Memory is a type of holding,an embrace, so I wonder if that’s at play when the watercurves up and over the bodies of the things in that dark,

thrashing womb, pulling humpbacks down again, afraidof forgetting the curves of their bodies, or the barnacleconstellations dotting their hides. See how the pelican glideson his wide carpet wings into the watery produce aisleand plucks a ripe, ink-filled plum-of-a-squid into his beak,

mumbling a pardon me as he grazes the spotted backof a whale shark vacuuming crumbs of creatures intoher stomach’s hungry black hole. Unbeknownst to her,a congregation of crustaceans gathers on the seabed arounda bonfire in her cousin’s sunken, split carcass, the same cousin

who once shared a beer with a pod of dolphins and won $20for kissing a sailor’s dog on her curious wet nose. The octopusesremember that dare, but the dog does not remember, divorcedfrom the ocean, much like me, who fails to remember what Iate for breakfast an hour after I’ve left the table and discarded

the plate in the sink. My memories sometimes leave melike seafoam. I hoard a pirate’s cove of sticky notes, burydoubloons of birthdays and lunch banter, afraid I might forgeta book title or the curve I made by accident when writingthe letter s. Is it any wonder that sailors mistook manatees

for mermaids? I think it’s the forgetting that scares me morethan the not-remembering, time eating through the ship’s hull,seawater wetting my feet, and I have to patch the leakbefore I’m swallowed. The work is hard. I get disappointedin myself and turn to distraction, decorating my nightstand

with conchs and coral, tying discarded feathersaround my neck. I take a picture of a green seagulland commit it to memory because the oceanwill wash away the paint, and no one will believe me,not even myself.