Dolphin Address 31 2003
September 10, 2003
Does a dolphin have a beak or a mouth? Look inside your own head. The closer you come to Dusty the less you will fear her and the more warmth you feel. She simply needs 4 rows of dagger sharp teeth to catch fish and work it inwards. If she would want to she tears the flesh from your bones or kills you with one blow of her fluke. Even in knee deep water. But like a police officer will not kill you just like that, Dusty will not turn her body against you at random.
If you travel a road it will become shorter. Details diminish the intervals. Initial void gives room to the familiar. The better you know something, the closer it comes.
Dusty is so much more refined. Her teeth are in rows, but such that they interlock. This is not only to facilitate holding fish. She receives her sonar emission with her jaws. With her teeth she can comb and sieve the sound to refine the information.
But dolphins also create a social protocol with their teeth towards people. That is a very different story. In the trainers quarters of the Delphinarium they opened their jaws in an invitation to lay my hand on their tongue. If I trust them, they can trust me.
Humans do this among each other by shaking hands, so they cannot attack each other.
Humans have another precaution: their 'safetybelt'. We take care not to come too close to the other persons face. This differs by the latitude. Norwegians are more distant than Italians. If two of both go into conversation, often a peculiar dance is done: one shies away, while the other one will want to come closer.
Dusty is not into that. I stroke her smile as she lays the point of her lower jaw against my cheek. I feel a soft humming. I don't know what she wants to say, but it feels very close.
Jan Ploeg, 'The Bridge Mills', Galway, September 10th 2003
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