I'm face down, in the Pacific Ocean. The tide gently rocks me back and forth, back and forth.
I'm snorkeling. Sport #3.
I watch bright yellow fish and orange fish, many, many fish swimming in and over and through coral. There's a green turtle to my right.
My back pain floats away in the tide. (It got bad the last few weeks on set, so bad I had trouble walking.)
The stress of the last weeks of work floats away in the tide.
My guilt of not writing my blog floats away in the tide.
I forget I'm a writer, girlfriend, daughter or friend.
In this moment, I'm a woman swimming with turtles.
One of them swims to the top and I follow her. Just an arms length away Three feet away the reptile opens her mouth and inhales.
She looks like a dinosaur, something primal, something ancient, she breathes the same air I breathe. And she's right there. Being so close to something so foreign makes time and space feel both small and infinite. (Is this what Borges was exploring in El Aleph?) The turtle dives. Her dance is ancient. Her life is simple, straight forward, uncomplicated.
I float and watch her swim,the serenity I so often long for envelopes me. It is mingled with the water and inseparable from the push and the pull of the tide. The serenity is the fish below me, moving back and forth and back and forth in the current. And the serenity is me.
This moment will last forever in my memory to be recalled when I need a piece of stillness and this moment is already gone. Both things are equally true.
Another thing is equally true, there is a turtle breathing right now, there are yellow fish and orange fish and puffer fish and blow fish moving back and forth with the water as I write this. And if I hadn't been brave, been determined to be both unfit and an athlete, I wouldn't know that.
It's good to be back my friends. I have many stories and adventures to tell you.
