Immersed in Life

Lone, loner, lonesome. Underwater.

Minus speech & scream & tears.

With exaggerated reverberation of life within.

Each beat thumping thuds yet silence amidst billions of life forms.

Hear each measured breath, feel it through the body. Inhaling through the mouth, exhaling through the nose – exactly opposite of the terrestrial relaxation expression.

Dip in, float, release air from your cylinder. Lay flat, face down. Observe. Learn to breathe through apparatus.

Stay.

Release more air. Don’t fear the darkness of the seabed. Once there, it will be all bright. Maintain motion & posture. Practise indicating condition in signs. Practise the language of 4 words. – Up, Down, Okay, & Not Okay. And breathe one sigh out.

Life transforms here. Stay relaxed here and the life in the ocean comes to greet you. Smile within. It shows here. Stay close to the ground and swim. They will all come to  you. The big ones, the small ones. The playful ones and the serious ones. There are things on the sea bed that don’t belong here. Curse mankind and move on. Watch a Dalmatian patterned palm size fish swim right under you. It thinks you are the manta ray. It’s timid and fearful, trying to keep pace slower than yours. Once sure that you aren’t one, it bursts into a hundred tiny fishes. It’s safe for the family to disperse, only to collect again as 1 unit at the next sense of fear.

There is fauna that you haven’t ever seen before, glowing from the rays of the sun spreading soft ambient light 15′ deep underwater. Its magical, musical and poetically silent. Like a large brush stroke painting the water’s canvas.

It’s that trance that keeps calling you back in. Further into the deep hollows of the sunken ship, like a gash into the heart of the ocean. Seething with rust, the dark iron has a path laid out for the curious lot. The Warship Liberty from WWII gave up here and became one with the depth & darkness. There are untold stories kept intact for almost a century. No one’s told them, none’s listening but if you watch, you can see. Flashbacks & romantic narrations of your history lessons.

It all makes sense here. The mundane of today will become lores of tomorrow. We will speak across eras. One who has touched the seabed has heard from other time periods. This can be scary and overwhelming, but never dull.