Too late to learn to swim

-warning_

I am going to spit this out without looking into too many facts……… I feel a bit sloppy about that, but, I want to keep the meanings and associations I currently hold intact for a little longer……………. So expect factual errors in my scientific content…. and investigate the info before you believe anything I have written. 

The image of an octopus holding a drowning woman under the water has been lurking in my brain since childhood. 

 There are points of interest for me that don’t quite make a cohesive story ……more like impulse driven shadows of  a thought that fill my head and crash into one another but never click together the way they should…. like if you started putting together a puzzle and then realized that not only were there pieces missing, but at least two different puzzles had been mixed together. 

  I can’t solve it or explain it fully ….. and that keeps me tethered to it …..the feelings are old and distant in a way that creates a depth for me … so when thoughts of it popped into my head again recently I decided to indulge. 

Here is a list of my preoccupations and some history:

• I watched a lot of science and nature shows as a kid…. Usually when I was alone in my basement (I also watched a lot of cartoons… wow saying that I see that I have not changed all that much…. except that my entire house is my basement now ) So I developed a lot of crazy ideas based on half facts, fantasy and ignorance. I specifically loved deep sea creatures. Not fish so much but wiggly little tentacled plants and armored monsters … and the octopus……..it seemed like a completely  different world. 
• The octopus hoarded things ….collecting and stashing the things it “liked” but there was a mindlessness to it …. I was more emotional about animals when I was young. I thought it was possible to reason with and befriend anything… so the compulsion to collect was a little frightening to me.  In my imagination, when I tried to interact with Mr. octopus there would be a non-malice but tragic misunderstanding between us… Where contact with the beast would mean my capture…. and eventual death………. because it just didn’t get that I couldn’t breath as it added me to its’ stash. 
• This connects to the point above ---- the arms act on their own… I heard some factoid about complex automatic responses rather than conscious decision making with the arms… so there isn’t a concept or thought that controls them …… they are automatically probing and exploring and attaching…. like a climbing vine attaching to a wall…. there is a frantic desperation to such an impulsive and uncontrollable appendage. [ Ok writing that I see the sexual implications of all of this …. I watch too much hentai to fein ignorance….. but at the same time when I am drawing, my thoughts are more about softness and vulnerability versus ensnaring captivity in a submerged toxic environment….. the sexual implications are realized later…. I’m not saying they aren’t there mind you ….. more like after I am done I look at it and go “huh…that’s kinda fetishy …. neat” ) 
• I didn’t think of this at all  when drawing this (but I should have) the ejecting ink defense fascinated me… the black ink clouding the water it seemed like an evil tainting ….  I was interested in the fact that a creature I was fond of,  was of holding that black corruption inside of it, and that the substance could erupt from it if provoked. 
• They just look so fucking cool. 
• I like the octo car wash sign.

:)