flâneur

Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time? | Aeon Essays

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We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?

Light spatters on the seafloor, creating a moving kaleidoscope of greens, blues and beiges as seagrass sways back and forth in the current. Shoals of fish shimmer in and out of rock formations while rays fly above, casting their shadows over crabs trawling the mudflats for edible detritus. And surveying it all through two oblong eyes, the octopus glides in the open water like a frictionless spaceship. As an eight-armed cephalopod, it neither looks nor moves like its aquatic peers. Up, down, left, right, forward or backward – all are accessible to the octopus. And though elegance and…

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