Don’t Expect it to Make Sense

Would you rather be a jellyfish or a cloud? It has to be one or the other. If you opt out of the choice or choose something else, you’re irrelevant as far as the jellyfish and the clouds are concerned. I know it’s not a great selection. Neither a jellyfish nor a cloud has a brain. They’re more or less at the mercy of forces they can’t control and are mostly water—much like human beings. And, like people, they can do a certain amount of damage. Jellyfish sting, sometimes severely, and clouds start raining and sometimes don’t know when to stop. They don’t do that with any malicious intent. It’s just their nature to do so.

There’s a difference, of course, when you’re forced to choose. You don’t completely check your human brain at the door. You have the option of changing from one to the other (and changing back). Moreover, you might decide to be a Weekend Jellyfish or a Cafeteria Cloud. Those who see themselves more solidly as jellyfish (despite the contradiction that presents) might see the Weekender as a JINO (Jellyfish in Name Only). Among jellyfish, that’s considered a severe term of abuse.

Clouds are naturally aloof—quite above it all—though sometimes they descend as fog. They justify the fog as the necessary complexity with which a given issue must be regarded. The fog entails slowing down to ensure the least amount of damage is done. There is movement, though to a jellyfish it looks as if no progress is being made. A particularly suspicious jellyfish may assume that there is something nefarious going on in the fog rather than a cloud just getting down to work.

Jellyfish regard stinging as a fundamental right. They assert that it is needed to subdue prey and to protect against predators, though they admit that they like to sting recreationally. Since clouds don’t sting, jellyfish say that clouds have no business legislating stinging. They suggest that if clouds could sting, they’d be stinging randomly all the time. What about lightning?

Clouds insist that they’re in the business of helping. They rain on the crops so they can grow. They contribute to the water table and prevent drought. Yes, sometimes they get carried away (and so do roads and houses). And they ruin the occasional ball game or picnic. They say that it’s nothing personal. Besides, there’s plenty of wholesome indoor fun to be had on those gray days.

Devout jellyfish and committed clouds will never begin to understand each other. And neither of those contingents can fathom how someone could be undecided. The undecided are jelly (but not fish) and foggy (but not clouds). Despite their vaunted enmity, jellyfish and clouds have a grudging respect for each other’s passion. As such, they save their choicest epithets for those who cannot make up their minds to be one noble thing or the other. Why be nothing? Can’t they see that there are things that need stinging or raining on? What, at last, is wrong with these people?

When I was young, I admit I was more in the jellyfish camp. Being a jellyfish was all about swimming in those days and I loved to swim—or, more accurately, drift. I considered clouds scolds and bullies, always thwarting jellyfish and raining on our parades. There was something untoward about their collectivist tendencies as they banded together and blocked out the sun for days at a time. It was “for our own good” they said. Their protectionism felt like plain old darkness. I missed a more freewheeling time when I could see where I was drifting aimlessly.

At the same time, I wasn’t comfortable with the growing emphasis on stinging. I couldn’t see stinging anyone, not even in self-defense. I tried not to swim in waters where it would come to a stinging situation. Yes, I’d often heard a good guy with tentacles is the only thing that beats a bad guy with tentacles, but I wondered about that as well. The National Tentacle Association kept calling, asking me to join. After a while I just let the machine pick it up.

Nonetheless, I continued to listen to my favorite jellyfish radio programs. I was endlessly amused as the hosts kept calling out cloud perfidy and corruption. Har, har! Do those clouds think we’re stupid? No—they’re the airheads! And then they have a thunderstorm to cover up their malfeasance. Damn those fluffy bastards!

And I went along this way, quite happily, until I fell in love with a cloud. Don’t ask how it happened. I couldn’t begin to tell you. But maybe I was just ready to find a different way to be. Being a jellyfish was fun but I was feeling a bit waterlogged. Where I had drifted was stagnant and stale. My vista was sharply limited and I felt my positions were increasingly untenable. And so I made the switch. I became a cloud though I absolutely remember what it was like to be a jellyfish. I still understand all the jellyfish jokes but I no longer laugh at them. I know the murky place they come from. And I’ve seen the jellyfish get worse, some lashing out and stinging for no good reason.

I’m enjoying the view from up here. I’m not entirely uncritical of my new tribe but on the whole it’s an improvement. I can see a more distant horizon and the gentle curvature of the earth. It’s okay to be a jellyfish if that’s what you really want to be. But if you haven’t made up your mind yet, I’ll say there are worse things to be than a cloud.

Or would you rather be a pig?