An irrational adherence to risk will keep you on land when you are supposed to be in the water

It’s time for another installment of the

Soaring Twenties

monthly Symposium, and this month’s theme is Risk. Check out the STSC page link and consider joining.

The risk of being a starfish isn’t in the peril of predation but in the largeness of mind because starfish lack the symmetry of body and instead only have the radiality of a head. One head and nothing more. Those arms are not limbs, and the center of the sea star is not a trunk. Instead, it is one embodied head with five or so appendages glissading along on its lips. An eye at the end of each ray lets in the difference between dark and light. All those openings are another verification that the starfish is just, or rather all, a head.

As we waited to board the ferry to Vashon Island, I saw my first wild sea star sighting near the pier. It was small, like me, clinging to a pile taller than the depth of the sea, exposed to the whip of wind and ambivalent eyes of people waiting in line. From cling to clung, the time seemed to pass slowly before boarding. Being on the water scared me, even tho the risk of sinking was nil to small. I located myself at the bow, not so much to experience the spray but to better identify my escape routes. A couple hugged each other close. She was a starfish to his pillar, ignoring the shoulders, clasping her appendages around this lucky man with a torso. I would’ve classified them as bikers by their garb and new lovers by their intense attention to each other.

The starfish’s mouth is on the bottom, which is called the oral. The starfish’s madreporite, named for its resemblance to madrepore coral, adorns the top, which is called the aboral. Between tubular feet and the velocity of water, the starfish kisses the seabed in search of companionship and nourishment.

Traveling puts you at increased risk of bringing home bedbugs, the most unwanted of souvenirs. And when Elisabeth and I drove to Seattle, I was obsessed with this risk. But “an increased risk” is as obscure as the cloudy water in a decades-old snow globe from the pier. So I took that heightened risk to its extreme and stripped each bed, investigated each headboard, and stashed my luggage in the tub.

Months after the trip and months before the ferry, Josh stalked the sand, plucking starfish from the tide, engaging the gulls, and jumping the widest mouth of a tiny tributary to the sea. I watched cargo ships defy their heft, skimming the froth from the soup of the sea as starfish glide the bottom of the bowl.  Couples moved like waves – united, divided, conjoined, alone, companionate again – down the beach. Or was it up? When all is sea level, where is up and where is down?

For years, while single and sober, I never performed fellatio without a condom because of the risk of chlamydia in my throat. Yet sex is less risky than love, so for years, I treated love like a lacy-legged parasite. Afraid of being a wave.