Fifteen

Reflecting on the two ideas of migration, which served two chapters in Ruth Padel’s book We are all from somewhere else: Go and Stay, Go and come back, the notion seems obvious, the first a one-way ticket; the second a round trip; while both intentions are born out of self-will, numerous variants are being intermediate between them, e.g. involuntary, forced, false and even theft migration. For instance googled yellow-lipped sea kraits I got hundreds of pictures, clicked into one I found a blue body, black bands yellow lip plush stuffed animal, huggable, hand-washable. I was thinking how a venomous sea snake of the South Pacific could swim all the way to Amazon, along with trillions new migrants to this neither land nor sea, a new-found galaxy. Intangible yet convertible, data is like vapour in the air, visible as raindrops, crisp as icicles; packed and shipped out from the warehouse portal. Sea krait is now gentle and playful, its body harmless and less sinew, a cuddly 30 inch slender pet pal, it has completed a risk-free migration, of body and soul.