It was time to settle down. I had been drifting and swimming for at least a week before I felt the inexorable urge for stillness. I found my spot; it wasn’t quite right. I found another and it was perfect. So perfect I’ve been here for the past century.
Monday
Let the water in. Let the water out. Let the mind drift while the body stays still and the troubles of the moving world are revealed for what they are: illusion. Truth lies in the stillness of self and the movement of water. Illusion is found in hectic errors of those who devote themselves to the kinetic life. The Movers.
Tuesday
Example. (Let the water in. Let the water out.) There’s a species of bipedal Mover that seriously believes we catch and deliberately drown those who dare to visit us. There were once detailed instructions in the US Navy diving manual (I know these things) for how to escape when your foot is malignantly seized by one of us. I don’t even sigh at such absurdity: I just filter more water. Fact: we never close fast or tight enough to catch anything. That’s not what we’re for. The idea of the trapped and helpless diver is just one more error of the Movers. Sit still and think and you might actually get somewhere.
Wednesday
How does something as big as me survive in these pleasant but nutrient-poor waters? That’s a sensible question, and I’m big all right: 4ft across and over 30st. The answer is agriculture. I farm algae: I collect them on my mantle – the soft living bit – and the nourishment I get from them more than makes up for the shortage of drifting food in the surrounding water. These days almost three-quarters of my needs come from farming.
Thursday
And that, of course, is why I chose my spot in these shallow, sunlit waters. I need the light, or rather my algae do. Being plants, they use the light to make food. Enough for themselves and for me. When the sun goes down I close up, because telling light from dark is essential to us all. I do so calmly, without trapping any divers.
Friday
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Perhaps the biggest mistake the Movers make is all that jumping on top of each other. That sex stuff. Two of them look ever so slightly different to one another and that excites them dreadfully. So they jump on each other and grab each other and fight each other and after that they have no end of trouble with the resulting little ones. Poor things: they’re quite unable to rise above it.
Saturday
It’s about thoughts, really. I thought of a world full of giant clams, and the sea all around was filled with sperm. A short while later – I have no wish to fertilise myself – I released 500m eggs. Off they go into the wild blue sunlit yonder – and soon enough there’ll be a tiny thought of a clam finding its spot on the brightly lit bottom of the ocean, setting off on a century of calm and contemplation.
Giant clam CV
Lifespan 100 years or more
Eating habits That which passes, that which grows
Hobbies Thought
Sexual preferences Me
Photograph by Hassan Ammar/AFP/Getty Images