A jelly story

When looking at a jelly lying at the sea's edge, a critter that uses the same genetic code as pretty much anything that has suffered the indignity of DNA analysis, it's hard to get worked up over nonsense.

• A physicist says that we, like the jellyfish, are mostly empty space.
• A priest says we have dominion this dying jelly, over all that lives.
• A chemist says that the orderly appearance of this critter, and us, does not deny entropy--the sun's slow collapse into chaos feeds our lives.
• A business man says the jelly is hard to sell, and loses interest.
• A poet say the jelly has a soul, and notices the cyan halo of sky around it.
• The astronomer ponders the angle of the jelly's shadow, a telling sign of winter to come.
• A geologist studies the angle of repose of the grains of sand, failing to see the critter at all.

The jelly faded back into the sea, now dead, its story as interesting as mine, as yours, our stories share a common end.

I almost missed this jelly, anxious as I was to catch up on something for somebody due somewhere before Monday's sunset. Now it has become part of my story.

We found the jelly a week ago, and a moment later, dolphins distracted us.
I meant to put the jelly back. I did not.
I had a chance to change the story.