Lee Pivnik - Chimeras publication

Lee Pivnik - Chimeras Publication in celebration of the exhibition which took place at Dále Zine. Oct 17th - Nov 24th, 2024

It once seemed impossible. A Category 5 in early June. In my grandmother’s telling, the storm’s landfall

felt like a meteor impact—the earth plunged into darkness as the sea engulfed the land. In the years

since, kudzu has glazed green what’s left of the shimmering glass towers at the edge of the city. As their

foundations sink deeper into the muck, the skyline looks like the jagged ribcage of some hulking beast.

Waves break over the creature’s spine, the desolate chain of suburban islands following the curve of the

ancient, elevated reef. When the storm hit, the state delayed evacuation orders until it was too late,

a decision many of us believe was an intentional choice to abandon the last progressive haven on the

peninsula. What was left of the region was designated by the government as a wildlife management area,

but without any effort at “management” to speak of, the plants have grown thick and wild, and no one

knows much about what happens on the inside.

Now, four decades after the storm and nearly two since I was born, life on the mainland has become

untenable. Increasing authoritarianism and an expanding draft for the state defense force pushed me

to leave before I was forced into militia service. I loaded a few small bags onto my father’s skiff and left

in the night, heading south through a labyrinth of canals and reservoirs. All telecommunications have

been cut off to the city, and the Coast Guard has retreated from the waters around the islands, which are

increasingly blocked by gyres of floating debris offshore. When the government realized the islands were

harboring dissidents, they launched a shadow war, restricting access to the territory, removing holdouts,

and monitoring the area through a network of modified trail cameras.

By the time I reached the shores of the city, the sun was rising and only the last of the stars was still

visible. As I clambered inland through mangrove tunnels, the water grew still and clean as it was filtered

by their roots. In the dappled sunlight, I could see the bottom now—bars of sand drifting over old

cracked asphalt, a green-tea lagoon steeping in the tannins of the forest. Slogging through the estuary, I

startled swarms of minnows and a flock of ibises, whose dawn chorus echoed all around me as I pulled

myself over the tangled roots.

I came here in search of chimeras. They were the people who thrived in these ruins after the storm by

grafting a strange new branch onto the phylogenetic tree. Back home, I’d heard folktales about them:

a queer group of mutants, made animal by nuclear fallout or symbiotic contamination. But this was

all salamander slander. The chimeras protected themselves the only way they knew how: by mimicking

the creatures around them. They’re the only beings here who can swim out of the surveillance net that

blankets the islands, through an evasive performance that can only be taught peer to peer, species to

species.

Together, we learned to scurry from root to crevice, under twigs and leaf litter. Our fur became dappled

with bits of it all, speckled patterns of the underbrush that rendered us nearly invisible to the surveillance

software. In this murky landscape, cloaked in camouflage, it’s a miracle we were able to find each other.

Yet we had to, so we did. We evolved new ways to see through each other’s disguises. We marked safe

routes with our musk trails and sang to each other in frequencies at the edges of the spectrum. And our

cloaked bodies—drab and mottled to camouflage us from prying eyes—grew special structures that

fluoresce in ultraviolet patterns our eyes adjusted to see in the dark.

To a hunter, we were just another leaf in the forest.

To each other, we beamed like fireflies.