Okay. My brain feels weird. Like, literally rewired. I just finished *My Octopus Teacher* on Netflix and the "Are you still watching?" prompt just popped up and I wanted to scream at it, "YES, I'M PROCESSING A LIFE-CHANGING EVENT HERE, GIVE ME A MINUTE." It's almost 2 AM and my apartment is dead silent and all I can hear is the ghost of the ocean in my ears.
I'm sitting on my couch, and my feet are cold, and I swear I can feel the South African Atlantic seeping into my living room. I had to pause it halfway through to make a cup of tea, and then the tea went cold because I just... forgot. I was just... gone. Submerged. That's the only word for it. The way they filmed it, you're not just watching a guy swim with an octopus. You're *there*. You're the cold water, you're the shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom, you're the sand swirling up from the seabed. Watching this on a laptop in my living room is the most bizarre disconnect. Here I am, wrapped in a fleece blanket, a cat purring on my lap, experiencing this raw, wild, dangerous world through a screen. I kept having to remind myself to breathe.
And that shark attack. I literally jumped. I was curled up under a blanket and I just lurched forward, spilling a little of my now-cold tea. My cat, who was sleeping peacefully on the other end of the couch, shot me a look of pure, unadulterated hatred. Sorry, Milo. But a shark just tried to eat my friend. That's what it felt like. She wasn't just "an octopus" anymore. She was a person. A smart, funny, resourceful little person in a boneless body. And seeing that pyjama shark grab her, the violence of it, the sheer terror... I was gripping the arm of my couch so hard my knuckles were white. It was visceral. I felt a primal fear for her. For a mollusk. What has this movie done to me?
But the thing I can't shake... the one thing that's just replaying in my head on a loop... is when he puts his hand on the ocean floor, and she just... she reaches out. One little tentacle. And she touches his finger. It's not an accident. It's a choice. It's a "hello." From a completely different kind of consciousness. An alien, right here on Earth, saying "I see you." And I'm on my couch, in the dark, with my mouth hanging open. Why did that hit me so hard? It's just a finger and a tentacle. But it felt like watching the first handshake ever. A moment of pure, unadulterated trust that bridges a gap of 600 million years of evolution. It's the most intimate, profound thing I've ever seen. And now I'm looking at my own hands, these weird, five-fingered things, and they feel so alien to me.
It made me think of when I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, and I was obsessed with being a master of disguise. I thought if I stood really still in the garden, covered in mud and leaves, the birds wouldn't see me. I was just a lump. A "mud-lump," I called it. I remember my mom coming out to call me for dinner and not seeing me for a full minute, just looking right past me. For a second, I felt like I'd actually done it. I'd disappeared. This octopus... she does that for real. She *becomes* the rock. She *is* the seaweed, her texture changing, her colors shifting. She camouflages with shells, using them as armor and a mobile home. My mud-lump was a pathetic joke. She's a magician. A ghost. Anyway...
Honestly, I'm sitting here wondering if I'm just being overly sentimental. Am I projecting? This guy, Craig, he's got this whole life, this mission, this daily ritual that connects him to the planet. He finds his way back from a place of burnout and apathy by diving into freezing water every day. And I'm... what? I'm a 28-year-old who just spent two hours on a couch feeling things about a cephalopod. Is this movie genuinely profound, or am I just lonely and it's 2 AM and my defenses are down? I thought I was having this deep, spiritual experience, but now that I'm typing this... was it just a really well-shot nature documentary? I don't know. I don't think so. But the doubt is there, niggling at the edges of my euphoria.
And the fact that I watched it on Netflix is so strange. I could have stopped at any time. I could have checked my phone. I could have switched to some stupid reality show if it got boring. But I didn't. The glow of the screen was the only light in the room, and it felt like this secret, personal portal. It wasn't a big, communal cinema experience. It was just me and this weird, beautiful, heartbreaking story beamed directly into my brain. It felt more intimate that way, I think. More personal. Like a secret the ocean was telling only me.
The whole time, I was just struck by the fragility of it all. Her life is a daily struggle for survival against sharks and seals. His life is a daily struggle against his own depression and the freezing cold water. And in the middle of all this struggle, they find this... this connection. This friendship. It doesn't make any logical sense. And yet it makes all the sense in the world.
And the end. I knew it was coming. You know how these things go. The circle of life and all that. Octopuses don't live that long. But watching her just... slowly come apart. Returning to the ocean. It was so gentle and so brutal. He talks about how she lays her eggs and then her body just... shuts down. She becomes a ghost of herself, a guardian for her young. And I felt a lump in my throat. A real, actual lump. Over an octopus. What is happening to me? I'm not a crier. I don't do this. But the image of him, just watching her fade, saying goodbye... it wrecked me. It was a love story, pure and simple. A strange, unlikely, beautiful love story.
I need to go to bed but I feel like I'm going to dream of kelp forests and tiny, inquisitive eyes. I feel like I should go outside and touch some grass or something, just to reconnect with my own world. But I also feel like I've just been given a key to a secret world I never knew existed. A world that's always been there, just beneath the surface.
9/10. - solid
-alex