I went to the park the other day, and watched the sunset. I sat at a bench and read a book. I read it all. I was there for a few hours. And it’s a pretty short book. The park is in a bay. The water is right there and it’s calm enough that if it weren’t for the salt in the air you could mistake it for a lake. It’s surrounded by land. Because it’s a bay. There are hills on the far side that are only high enough to just begin their craggy transition into what might be considered tiny mountains, but not high enough to speed the sunset up in any real way. They’re still green, if a little rocky. The sun didn’t set until 9.

The open ocean makes me anxious. Peering out into a horizon with nothing in it fills me with a sense of unease. Imbalance. Like I’m looking downhill and could start falling towards it. I need mountains around to feel grounded. Cradled.

The park was busy. Kayakers. Picnickers. Strollers. Watchers, waiters, and waders. A man throwing up on the ground under the gazebo and loudly, drunkenly, assuring everyone he’s just fine and not to worry. Passive ears listening but not acting, perhaps grateful for the permission not to. Community. He complimented my hat earlier and I’d been watching him pick fights with the gulls over his sandwich. I thought he was eating it slowly just to taunt them, but now I think it was probably the nausea.

At around 8pm someone came with a blanket and set up on the grass. Maybe 20 feet from the table I was reading at. They were alone and only had the blanket. They lay down and stretched out over it, and watched the clouds. Or were napping. They had sunglasses on. I thought it was cool that they were alone too, and kept reading.

I read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. It’s not even 200 pages long. None of the characters have names. They all call each other by their professions. The Biologist is the protagonist. The title of this thing I wrote is funny if you read the book. I promise. She’s exploring a surreal and dangerous seemingly alien environment. An environment which fundamentally changes living things that interact with it, including her. Many teams have gone in, and few have returned. She starts with a small group and they are all gradually lost throughout the novel. It’s extremely lonely from beginning to end. Solitary. Written from her perspective it reads like a stream of consciousness at times. Difficult to parse reality from her increasingly unreliable perception. It becomes clear that by the time she has begun to write that she had already been under the preternatural influence of her environment for some time. She holds on to the one anchoring truth which exists, which is that she is sure she will not be leaving this place. She doesn’t say so until the end of the novel. It goes unspoken for most of the book until finally she confirms this conclusion you and her have come to together, yet separately, through the length of her account. In the final pages she affirms what you have known together for the last 200.

Her love for discovery as a scientist translates into love for this place, and it becomes clear without words that she will not be leaving. Or that if she does she will be irrevocably, fundamentally changed. Literally and physically at the cellular level, she will be a different being. She loves this place and it has changed her. The hope lies in the implied reciprocity. She has allowed this place to change her and perhaps it has allowed her to change it. Though the situation appears alien it is deeply familiar. What was mischaracterized as corruption is just exchange. Symbiosis. Becoming. She led herself with curiosity and a desire to know, and so was able to integrate herself into the environment and perhaps change it for the better by allowing herself to change. I think there is a statement here being made about the nature of symbiotic relationships and how they cannot be purely utilitarian. To be known is to be loved and thereby changed forever. A piece of you replaced with something bright the way that she is. Something greater but not beyond human. It hits you hard when you realize that she gave up even her name just to be here. Maybe never had one to begin with.

I looked up from my book and thought about what it would be like to join them on the blanket.