2003-01-22 - 12:02 a.m.

I'm still not certain how I feel about the Seaquarium.

At the behest of the lovely and eternally persuasive Julieclipse, I allowed myself to be urged to be driven across the state [Editor's note: 2 weeks ago] in the rather close truck cab of a man whom I shall refer to as Phintasmagoria to the Miami Seaquarium.

It was not at all a bad ride. Alligator Alley is beautiful in the morning, even when it's tinder-dry and waiting for cleansing lightning, and a close truck cab is nothing to complain about when you've got Julieclipse nestled against you. Miami was ... interesting to drive around, but my sound navigational skills and unerring talent with map-reading got us through Hialeah and Miami Springs in record time.

There were lots of dolphins.

A chorus line.

A cavalcade.

A century.

A cascade.

A big heap o' dolphins, is what it was.

Beautiful, sleek, well-fed, well-cared-for dolphins gleaming at the peak of strength and health, whizzing powerfully around their multi-leveled tanks and their sandy-bottom lagoons and their crescent pools, cutting the water, slashing the air, daring gravity like mad grinning corsairs.

They're intriguing folk.

It was dazzling to watch them perform what was less trickery than artistry, leaping and twisting and flying with the greatest of ease with no nets, no ropes, no wires. And there were other rings to the circus as well, folks, with Miami's LAR-gest superstar, the LADY of the deep, LOOOOOO-lita!, and to your left, good folks, stay with us and keep your eyes on the ring, because here come those lovable clowns, the SEA LIONS!

Beautiful, amazing, charming animals, a wonder to the eye and a delight to interact with even fleetingly and utterly pleasing to the very roots of the toes.

But it was a CIRCUS.

I'm all in favor of a circus, by and large. I was born a clown and I'll no doubt die with a greasepaint smile on my lips. There's nothing I love better than to flaunt society and dispel this perilous life through the simple magic of illusions and laughter and sawdust. Mankind needs a circus.

But dolphins, I think, do not.

It was somehow ... hell, I don't know ... SHAMING, almost, to watch the animals in the Top Deck Tank swim around and around through the vast blued windows, watching them interact and form groups and go up and down and explore their limited world and watch the people through the glass and to hear the faint pops and crackles and eerie whistles through the thick walls ... and then to see them eagerly poise beneath the garishly-costumed trainers, their mouths gaping, waiting for a caper or a herring before launching themselves into their act.

The veneer ... the cheap polygrain FACADE of education offered by the Seaquarium was all the more insulting given the substance of the shows. You don't learn about a dolphin by watching it wave a pectoral fin at you while the trainer shrieks "HE'S SAYING 'HI!'". You don't learn about an orca by watching her balance a willowy 19-year-old blonde on her head. You don't learn about a Pacific harbor seal by watching him go down a slide.

Well, you do.

But you learn something even more important about humans.

Especially when you're laughing and clapping.

God help me, I loved those little guys. I was helpless to stop enjoying them, even while I was vaguely insulted, quietly disquieted, airily angered and strangely saddened. I wanted to watch them.

I wanted to touch them.

I was sucked in by their natural grace and beauty and the P.T. Barnum-blessed glamour that the Seaquarium rubes threw on them by the bucketful. I wanted to bathe in their star power.

Damned celebrities.

Damned gray dorsal-finned sharp-toothed celebrities.

Not their fault, per se.

But it's sad and it's titillating and it's hilarious and it's infuriating.

Orcas shouldn't be kept in tiny pools surrounded by swimming snacks and gawked by thousands of uncomprehending eyes.

But neither should Lolita, or Keiko for that matter, be abandoned by those who fed and succored them and forced to subsist in the cold deeps they've not known.

Hell, we just need to TALK to the cod-sucking waveriders.

As in so much else in life, I'll trust that to Julieclipse.

*****

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