5/26/2006 - Fast becoming addicted
It's a beautifully calm day outside. From my balcony I can see the breakers washing over the sand, the water water looks absolutely devince. Smooth like caramel, the barest glints of sparkle from the sunlight striking the odd bit of swell.
And here I am inside, at my computer, fastidiously typing away at assignments and work and research.
I hate this time of year when the weather has settled for that brief lull between autumn and winter, and the world hangs poised for it to tip into storms and frosts and wind. The leaves have almost all fallen from the trees leaving their bare fingers reaching desperately toward the grey skies. When I walk down the grey cobblestone road on my way to my office I can hear my boots crunching through them, feel the rustling as they are crushed beneath my toes.
I hate this time of year when the water is so still, waiting, and I can't dive because work hums along steadily and life keeps moving even though the waters have, for that brief period, stopped. There's an itch in my soul to pull my worn BC from its hanger and simply wonder down to the beachfront by myself. The illicit thrill of gearing up alone and facing the breakers, knowing that it's just you and the ocean and you hope to God you aren't challenging it on a day where it doesn't feel like fooling around.
There's a primal part of me that's let go when I'm on the water, whether it's on one of the boats as we hurtle over the swell and windchop with the saltspray flying across my skin and the wind tearing at my hair with playful fingers, or whether it's taking a walk on a beach with coarse white-blond sand and crushed shells that glint pink and mauve and pearl in the sunset while the grasses whisper in the breeze.
It's hard to find that release sometimes, when life is so busy and time is so fast. It feels overly melodramatic and pretentious to say that I ache for a dive, but I do. I haven't been in the water for over a week, and there's a feeling of completion missing from me when I can't still feel salt in my hair and my skin stretched dry with sunburn and cold and wind.
It's an addiction not many understand, and fewer are able to comprehend if they don't dive themselves. I find it hard after a week or two of not diving; I know there are some of reading this who go for months without the opporunity to get wet and blow bubbles, and I'm absolutely amazed that you can hold out for that long. One of my favourite sites is two minutes from my house. I dive it at night and on weekends and when I teach and sometimes just for the sake of a dive. Another I have to drive for thirty five minutes to get there, but it's worth every rotation of the wheels on my car for beauty and presence and unspoilt growth. Shallow and tucked out of a sight, it looks so unassuming from the surface, and yet, underwater...
It is not a sad indication of my life that I prefer the company of fish and crabs and bubbles, and the silence of a buddy with a camera, over and above the company of others.
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