The Log From The Sea Of Cortez Part 11

Once Ed said to me, "For a very long time I didn't like myself." It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. "It was a very difficult time," he said, "and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that. Then gradually," he said, "I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why cannot I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right."

This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person "Ed" as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking. They cannot see themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves.

Once Ed was able to like himself he was released from the secret prison of self-contempt. Then he did not have to prove superiority any more by any of the ordinary methods, including giving. He could receive and understand and be truly glad, not compet.i.tively glad.

Ed's gift for receiving made him a great teacher. Children brought sh.e.l.ls to him and gave him information about the sh.e.l.ls. And they had to learn before they could tell him.

In conversation you found yourself telling him things-thoughts, conjectures, hypotheses-and you found a pleased surprise at yourself for having arrived at something you were not aware that you could think or know. It gave you such a good sense of partic.i.p.ation with him that you could present him with this wonder.

Then Ed would say, "Yes, that's so. That's the way it might be and besides-" and he would illuminate it but not so that he took it away from you. He simply accepted it.

Although his creativeness lay in receiving, that does not mean that he kept things as property. When you had something from him it was not something that was his that he tore away from himself. When you had a thought from him or a piece of music or twenty dollars or a steak dinner, it was not his-it was yours already, and his was only the head and hand that steadied it in position toward you. For this reason no one was ever cut off from him. a.s.sociation with him was deep partic.i.p.ation with him, never compet.i.tion.

I wish we could all be so. If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away. Maybe we would not have to hurt one another just to keep our ego-chins above water.

There it is. That's all I can set down about Ed Ricketts. I don't know whether any clear picture has emerged. Thinking back and remembering has not done what I hoped it might. It has not laid the ghost.

The picture that remains is a haunting one. It is the time just before dusk. I can see Ed finis.h.i.+ng his work in the laboratory. He covers his instruments and puts his papers away. He rolls down the sleeves of his wool s.h.i.+rt and puts on his old brown coat. I see him go out and get in his beat-up old car and slowly drive away in the evening.

I guess I'll have that with me all my life.

GLOSSARY.

OF TERMS AS USED IN THIS WORK.

ABORAL. The upper surface of a starfish, brittle-star, or sea-urchin, as opposed to the under or oral surface whereon the mouth is situated.

ALGAE. Simple plants, often unicellular; the higher forms include the seaweeds.

AMBULACRAL GROOVE. A furrow bisecting the underside of the rays of starfish through which the tube feet are protruded.

AMPHIPOD. Literally, "paired-legs." Minute shrimp-like crustaceans, laterally compressed; the beach hoppers, sand fleas, skeleton shrimps, etc.

ANASTOMOSING. Dictionary definition: "Union or intercommunication of any system or network of lines, branches, streams, or the like."

a.s.sOCIATION. An a.s.semblage of animals having ecologically similar requirements.

ATOKOUS. The s.e.xually immature stage of certain polychaet worms.

AUTONOMY. Reflex, or seemingly voluntary, separation of a part or a limb from the body, followed by regeneration.

BUNODID ANEMONE. One of a family of sea-anemones characterized by a b.u.mpy or warty body wall.

CALCAREOUS. Containing deposits of calcium carbonate; calcification.

CERATA. Dorsal projections which take the place of gills.

COMMENSAL. An organism living in, with, or on another, generally partaking of the same food.

COSINE WAVE. A wave graphically represented by a curving line, the peaks and troughs of which are equal and complementary.

CTENOPh.o.r.e. A type of jellyfish characterized by the possession of meridional rows of vibrating plates which propel and orient the animal.

DACTYL. Term applied to the last joint of a crustacean leg.

DEHISCENCE. A bursting discharge, usually of eggs or sperm.

DROWNED CORAL FLAT. A flat containing coral, some heads of which have been suffocated by sand.

ECHIUROID. A worm-like animal related to the sipunculids, in which the body is variably sac-like, usually with thin skin, and having often a spoon-shaped proboscis.

ECOLOGY. The study of the mutual relations between an organism and its physical and sociological environment.

ELYTRA. s.h.i.+eld-like scales of certain worms.

ENDEMIC. Dictionary example: "An endemic disease endemic disease is one which is constantly present to a greater or less degree in any place, as distinguished from an is one which is constantly present to a greater or less degree in any place, as distinguished from an epidemic disease, epidemic disease, which prevails widely at some time, or periodically...." which prevails widely at some time, or periodically...."

EPITOKOUS. s.e.xually mature stage in polychaet worms, characterized by changes of the posterior end which enable normally crawling worms to be free-swimming.

ETIOLOGY. Dictionary definition: "1. The science, doctrine, or demonstration of causes, especially the investigation of the causes of any disease. 2. The a.s.signment of a cause or reason; as, the etiology etiology of a historical custom." of a historical custom."

FLORIATE. Flower-like.

GASTROPOD. Literally, "stomach-foot." Belonging to a group of animals comprising the snails, slugs, sea-hares, etc.

GYMn.o.bLAST. Belonging to a group (of hydroids) in which the polyps lack the skeletal cups of other hydroids into which the soft parts can be withdrawn.

HOLOTHURIAN. Sea-cuc.u.mber. One of a group of echinoderms, or spiny-skinned animals, some varieties of which, under the commercial name beche-de-mer beche-de-mer or or trepang, trepang, are used by the Chinese for food. are used by the Chinese for food.

HYDROID. A small, plant-like, usually colonial animal.

INTERTIDAL. See Littoral. Littoral.

INTROVERT. A closed tubular pocket capable of being unrolled and extended inside out.

ISOPOD. Literally, "same legs." Usually small crustaceans in which all the legs are similar, comprising the pill-bugs, sow-bugs, and many marine forms.

ISOTHERM. A line joining or marking equal temperatures.

LITTORAL. Region of the sh.o.r.e bounded by its highest normal submergence at high tide and most extreme emergence at low tide. Intertidal.

MUTATION. In the life history of a species, the sudden appearance of a new trait that breeds true and becomes eventually one of the characters of the species or of the new species thus formed.

MYSIDS. Usually minute crustacea, called "opossum shrimps" because of their possession of marsupial plates within which the young develop.

NUDIBRANCH. Literally, "naked gill." One of a group of sh.e.l.l-less gastropods, often brilliantly colored and of delicately beautiful form.

OPHIURAN. Brittle-star or serpent-star. Members of one of the five cla.s.ses of echinoderms or spiny-skinned animals.

PAPILLA. Small elevation; in holothurians, modified tube feet not used for locomotion.

PELAGIC. Free-floating at or near the surface of the sea.

PLANKTON. Generally microscopic plant and animal life floating or weakly swimming in the upper layer of a body of water.

POLYCHAETS. Usually elongate worms characterized by the possession of abundant chaetae or bristles.

POLYCLADS. Flatworms in which the intestinal tract has extensive ramifications.

POLYP. An invertebrate having a hollow cylindrical body, closed and attached at one end and opening at the other by a central mouth surrounded by tentacles. May be an individual (as an anemone) or a member of a colony (as a coral polyp).

PORCELLANIDS. Crabs of the family Porcellanidae, often called porcelain crabs because of the carapace texture of typical examples.

QUATERNARY, OR RECENT. The latest of the epochs into which geologists divide the history of the earth. Late Quaternary includes the present time.

RESPIRATORY TREE. The respiratory organ of holothurians; so named because it resembles a tree inside out. Fresh water is taken in at what corresponds to the trunk and penetrates to the delicate branches, which provide great absorption area in proportion to the volume.

SCALAR. Mathematical term. An abstract quant.i.ty having magnitude but not direction, such as volume, ma.s.s, weight, time, electrical charge, and always indicated by a real number.

SERPULID. A polychaet worm which builds a calcareous tube, usually coiled.

SESSILE. Attached, therefore not moving.

SIPHONOPh.o.r.e. A type of jellyfish. The Portuguese man-o'-war and other spectacular forms belong to this group.

SIPUNCULIDS. Worm-like animals characterized (among other things) by the possession of an introvert, and of rough, cuticle-like skin. Capable of great expansion; contracted, some of them merit the name peanut worm.

SYNDROME. A group of signs and symptoms occurring together and characterizing a disease.

SYNONYMY. The various names used to designate a given species or group.

TAXONOMY. A sub-science of biology concerned with the cla.s.sification of animals according to natural relations.h.i.+ps and with the rules governing the system of nomenclature.

TECTIBRANCHS. A group of sometimes sh.e.l.l-less gastropods to which belong the sea-hares and bubble-sh.e.l.ls.

TELEOLOGY. The a.s.sumption of predetermined design, purpose, or ends in Nature by which an explanation of phenomena is postulated.

TENSOR. A mathematical term for the stretching factor which is necessary to change one vector, or force, into another vector having a different amount of force and direction. (Thus, if one imagines a given force A A traveling south at 40 miles an hour, and another force traveling south at 40 miles an hour, and another force B B traveling southeast at 60 miles an hour, mathematically to translate force A into force B, the factor which changes one into the other must have not only force and direction, but stretching power, to pull traveling southeast at 60 miles an hour, mathematically to translate force A into force B, the factor which changes one into the other must have not only force and direction, but stretching power, to pull A A equal to equal to B, B, and that factor is called the and that factor is called the tensor tensor.) Tensor is the quant.i.ty necessary in Einsteinian physics to translate vectors from one set of co-ordinates (frame of reference) to another.

TEREBELLID WORM. A polychaet worm which builds a sandy or pebbly tube, cemented usually to the underside of rocks by its own mucus.

THIGMOTROPISM. An innate tendency to seek enclosing contact with a solid or rigid surface, as in a burrow.

TROPISM. Innate involuntary movement of an organism or any of its parts toward (positive) or away from (negative) a stimulus.

TURBELLARIAN WORMS. The large group of flatworms to which the polyclads belong.

UBIQUITOUS. Occurring everywhere (though not necessarily abundantly) in the total area under consideration.

VECTOR. A mathematical term for an abstract quant.i.ty such as velocity, acceleration, or force, having both both magnitude and direction. It may also have position in s.p.a.ce, but this is not necessary. A vector is symbolized or represented by an arrow. magnitude and direction. It may also have position in s.p.a.ce, but this is not necessary. A vector is symbolized or represented by an arrow.

XEROPHYTIC. Plants structurally adapted to withstand drought.

ZOOID. Individual member of a colony or compound organism, having more or less independent life of its own.