Underwater Musings

(my first post ten years ago, Oct 22, 2006)

This is my first attempt at sonar. I write because I am often lonely and I love the company of words. Words are little sparks of sound with meaning, each with an ancestral heritage of its own. I write because it’s how I feel my way through the dark. Words are my path of bread crumbs which may lead me out of the forest or in deeper.

I would like to remain a ticklish dolphin well into my old age, swimming in the underwater sun patches at my local YMCA pool. I love to see the ancient ladies methodically swimming laps, flowing through the turquoise tinted water. Just to be near them is equal to being fed chicken soup by five grandmothers. These ladies swim daily. Some have translucent skin with blue and green veins, bruises, scars, and brittle bones. They all have rosy cheeks and hearty laughs. They are beautiful. This is the chlorinated community church of the underwater aqua mamas.

Life is not the thing that begins after you ban leaf blowers and clear away junk mail. Life includes all the things that come along including fear and centipedes. Life is now. I tell myself; swim, write, paint, play your horn, cultivate courage in spite of fear, celebrate absurdity, imagination, and have fun. Laugh and learn. Find out who you are. What else are we here for?

Sometimes I wake at 4 am, and I mix up a batch of sourdough and realize the mailmen and milkmen are already beginning their day and my musician friends are just getting to sleep, and I am upside down from the perspective of those living on the other side of the planet.