I eat breakfast with a cockroach in my sink, brushed ants off the soles of my feet, fluff the sheets to fly the black sand off onto the floor. The ocean never stops making noise. The sea is angry and my mother is asking for proof of life.
I’m eating dried broad beans in bed, reading books about creativity, sex fetishes, coral reefs, and mermaids. Sweatshirt and elephant pants got me cozy. Peppermint tea on my tongue. My hair is wet and smells of banana shampoo. I’m very clean for the first time in days.
I went scuba diving this morning inside a shipwreck. A turtle was eating, it’s beak clinging to the edge of the ship while it’s flippers floated absentmindedly, its body like a little flag in the wind. A day octopus poked its head out of a coral hiding spot. It was hard to tell it was an octopus. I would have floated by had the dive master not pointed it out. The camouflage is incredible on these creatures!
Breathing my body up and down in the blue space, I’m conscious of coral and fish all around me. Don’t touch anything. I float. Inhale I go up a little. Exhale I sink down. I feel a pull inside me to swim away from the coral covered ship.
I look out into the blue. That’s all there is, blue. Blue. Blue up and down as far as I can see. Blue so calm. Blue so inviting. Blue so secretive and mysterious. Blue has never been so beautiful in my eyes before now.
I want to leave, turn away from the humans, the bubbles, the rainbows swimming around me, the delicate coral creatures, not quite an animal not quite a plant, and fin this body out into the nothingness, the everythingness of the open blue water.
It is one of the most powerful sensations of enchantment I have ever experienced. This is what it feels to be mesmerized, under the spell of some crazy kind of magic. It would suck me in and I would let it. So instead I look back at the colors. Inhale, I float up toward the surface. Too much. Exhale just a little and I sink back down just a little. Follow the leader.
Since learning the basics of freediving and experiencing life under the ocean for one minute on one breath, scuba suddenly seems very loud and very bulky.
When I started scuba diving, people around me kept saying how much they love the silence down there. Well, Jesus, how loud their mind chatter must be because from the moment I first sunk into the water I was amazed at how loud it is down there.
Now that I’m into freediving, I appreciate even more how much noise there is below the surface. As scuba divers, our bubbling and breathing is so loud. I hear the hissing of my breath and the release of the gas into the water.
First most important rule in scuba diving is to always breath, keep breathing, breathe continuously, never stop breathing!!!
I was tempted today to stop breathing for just a split second so I could create more silence inside myself, so I could hear the ocean make her noises. I wanted to listen. I realize now, I feel it deep in my body, why I want to freedive. I want to be inside the ocean as quiet and still as possible so I can hear what she has to say to me.
Scuba is a playground of confidence building energy. Get used to being underwater. Freediving is promising me an entirely different type of magic.
love & rainbows,
Cha Wilde