under the sea

koh tao, thailand

the subject is scuba diving. pressed for metaphors, i would go with human flight. not in the roger-victor-you're-cleared-for-takeoff sense, more in the donning a cape and looking on the hamlet below with benevolent or nefarious vigilance, case depending. on the mechanics alone, the metaphor suits. up here on terra firma, we're a bit constrained by gravity and an extra dimension in our movements; a bit like those limitations imposed upon early era nintendo video game protagonists. but down below (and as the movies suggest, up above), one's body can move up, down, and side-to-side with scant limitation save for physical conditioning and oxygen supply. but that's not the reason for the metaphor (or was this a simile?)

i've gone deep, real deep, five times over the past forty-eight hours per the requirements of my advanced certification course. there was one dive that involved a one meter square and my best impression of a performing seal. another had a compass on my wrist with a little obstacle course and the third found a flashlight in my left hand as we searched the coral after sunset. both of my dives today bottomed out at thirty meters and that was the "lesson" in its entirety.

the reason behind all of it, and i'm getting back to the flying thing mentioned above, is that scuba diving is fun. it is surreal. it is one of those rare activities that can literally transport you into another world (if you do not classify the bottom of the ocean as another world, then we are in complete disagreement.) to know barracuda in its grilled form is to know a delicacy; to see a school of hundreds of them slice by above you is to have an experience. to hear ringo sing about an octopus' garden is to appreciate the quantity of drugs he must have ingested; to see one hovering under the coral is to understand that he could have been dead sober and padi certified. it is easy enough to dismiss the clipboard-toting and hairy-legged girl accosting you to save the coral reef outside whole foods or your favorite bookstore, but to see tens of thousands of inch-long fish hover and sway within inches of a massive submerged outcropping is to understand that the coral respires. it breathes and lives like any of us, though it's far more beautiful and supports infinitesimally more life.

and that's still only part of it. looking up to see the sun cut through deep, azure waters? yeah. hearing your breath come in sounding like you're on life support and then expelling a thousand clear bubbles that come out sounding like currency in a bubbly kingdom. seeing that this fish could kill you but it won't; you could kill that one but you could never; all the while this one is rubbing against your leg and another is inches from your mask and you think yourself better for all of it combined.

at some point, i realized that the best comparison is travel. both experiences involve a displacement from the norm and an immersion into the foreign. you drop into a different world to which you can never truly belong. even if you memorize the lay of the land, find a way to know and communicate with the inhabitants, find yourself a never exhaustive supply of clean air and nourishment, there will always be at least one thing you will never know because you're not from there. you never could be and you never will be and you must accept the fact that you are there to learn and love and embrace as much as possible to take back in your heart and mind, because there is no other way it can go with you. at least, at the end of this trip, i will have another degree of certification for one of them.