The Grand Temptation: Finding Faith in the Taxonomy of Fish

Maybe Cape Cod is fertile ground for existential transformation. Something about the metals in its sandy soil catalyzing metaphysical shifts—I don't know. All I know is I had my entire worldview rearranged when I was visiting its shores. It happened when I was about seven years old, and oddly enough, it was that moment that would pave the way for my obsession with the naturalist David Starr Jordan, that would cause me to spend nearly ten years researching his life in hopes that it held some clue that could help me when my life later unraveled.

It was early morning, early summer. I was on vacation with my family in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, just fifty miles, as the crow flies, from Penikese Island, where Jordan's scientific career began in earnest—a lonely little speck on the horizon that was once called an "outpost of hell." I was on the mainland, though, standing with my father on the deck, gazing at a yellow-and-green marsh that rushed toward the horizon. We were trading off a pair of clunky black binoculars, trying to get a better look at a white dot we had noticed in the distance. My dad was a tall, mustachioed man, with a mane of jet-black hair in those days, cut-off jean shorts, no shirt, and a fuzzy, friendly belly, nearly always offering a pastel fleck of lint. The rest of the house—my mom, my two older sisters, our cats—was still asleep. Unable to get the lenses to focus properly, I had just handed the binoculars back to my dad. I kept staring at the white dot nestled in the reeds—wondering if it was a swan, a buoy, something more exciting—when for some reason I cannot recall, I asked my dad, "What's the meaning of life?"

Maybe it had been the expansiveness of the marsh, which ended at the ocean, which ended … I didn't understand where—I pictured an edge, with sailboats tipping off—that made me suddenly wonder what we were all doing here.

My dad paused, raising one black eyebrow behind the binoculars. Then he turned to me grinning and announced, "Nothing!"

It felt like he had been waiting eagerly, my whole life, for me to finally ask. He informed me that there is no meaning of life. There is no point. There is no God. No one watching you or caring in any way. There is no afterlife. No destiny. No plan. And don't believe anyone who tells you there is. These are all things people dream up to comfort themselves against the scary feeling that none of this matters and you don't matter. But the truth is, none of this matters and you don't matter.

Then he patted me on the head.

I have no idea what my face would have looked like then. Ashen? It was as if a big feather comforter had just been ripped off the world.

Chaos, he informed me, was our only ruler. This massive swirl of dumb forces was what made us, accidentally, and would destroy us, imminently. It cared nothing for us, not our dreams, our intentions, our most virtuous of actions. "Never forget," he said, pointing to the pine-needly soil beneath the deck, "as special as you might feel, you are no different than an ant. A bit bigger, maybe, but no more significant"—he paused, consulting the map of hierarchies that existed in his head—"except, do I see you aerating the soil? Do I see you feeding on timber to accelerate the process of decomposition?"

mira, Noche Azul, 2019. Oil on canvas, 22" x 20".

BALISTES VETULA, THE OLD-WIFE.

OSTRACION NASUS, THE NOSE-TRUNK.

TETRODON TESTUDINEUS, THE TOADFISH.

KYRTUS INDICUS.

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