Water breath
I live under water now. The thought a couple of years ago horrified me. I walked around slowly with the great weight of the sea holding me back for a couple hours. I remember the salt water stinging my eyes, and then as if they came into focus, the pain went away. The sand I kicked up from the floor was in slow stop frames at my feet. As I tried to get my bearings, a school of fish had gone by with flashes of silvery scales and gave a startled look or two as they moved in tandem around an underground rocky cliff and into the darkness.
Let’s get back to my awakening. When my eyes opened I saw gray sand and felt cold nudges on my cheek, a fish was pecking at me. A fish! I tried to scream into the silence and my heart dropped into my guts. As I inhaled I felt cold water run through my body and I back peddled sending me into the air, or rather up off of the ocean floor. A mass of seaweed wrapped around my ankles in the process and I looked right and left as if that would help anything. I don’t know how long I argued with reason, I just found myself sitting on the ocean floor. I must be dead. I looked down at the ocean floor and saw one of my bootlaces waving slowly about and looked at my hands. They were not wrinkled and I did not know how long I had been under the water. The only panic was settling down and I found myself grasping the unreality that was unfolding before me. It was a dream. I pinched myself and felt the pain, surely if I was in a deep sleep I would have awoken for that. I was breathing, I felt the water initially cold and salty was now just a slow warm reassuring flow. It sustained me and maybe even kept me warm and alive. The breathing was disturbing, I found myself looking for air and anything that would rid me of this surreal phantom limb feeling in regards to surviving without the air. I followed the fish or at least in the direction they had gone. I found that movement was slower, as the pressure of the water held me back as far as speed and agility was concerned it also added many dimensions. No longer constricted to walking, I could pump my legs and stroke my arms and be free from the ground. It is like flying in a way, like being a fish in another way. I rounded the cliff and sensed that the waters depths were very deep at that point as the landscape immediately blurred below me and there was a large blackness with rocks poking out of the nothing like soft gray painted polka dots that had been rained on.
So I stopped. I swayed in the currents and I listened, not much in the way of hearing underwater. Everything is sort of muffled and I felt later that my hearing had adjusted. But if you will, back then it was like being blind. I could not identify the sounds; sound travels very well under water, you just have to know what you are hearing. If you do not and it is completely new to you, it means and stands for nothing. It took me a lot of time. Now I can hear fish long before I see them. I can orient myself at depths and understand landscapes long before they come into focus. In the distant surface I can hear birds, oars, ships, planes, music, and even little feet running on the sand. While I swayed to and fro on the current I recalled the last thing I remembered prior to awakening with a fish pecking at me. I was on a charter and I had just caught a fish, I stood up and yelled in my excitement, I stepped back. Something had yanked at my ankle and pulled me through the air with such violence and sudden force I had only a second to look down in disbelief. The deck was just a blur and I heard someone shouting or screaming, wrapped around my foot was a rope. How it got there, I will never know. I just registered that I must be in the air, by the time I looked up from the rope I saw a flash of decking come at me like someone had swung an iron skillet at my face. There was a tremendous thump and like a rag doll I sailed into the air again. My world went into a blur of silent fireworks and spongy blacks and grays. I felt my body hit the water and again with great force, I was pulled under. All was silent and I was sinking and I blinked out. Like a large light switch to my world was cast out. That event coupled with the idea I was under water, led me to believe it was death or dreaming. So I floated for a long time, a fish would swim by periodically. Eventually I made my way to the ocean floor and began to trudge. I was just walking aimlessly and thinking to myself. Adjusting to the predicament and coming pretty close to losing it. I sang out loud a Beatles song about “an Octopuses Garden”, and laughed now and again. What else was there to do?
I recall the hunger. I found that a great amount of energy had been expended and I was starving. I tried in vain to grab a fish. I settled on seaweed and barnacles. There is something to be said about urchins. I even ate a sea anemone. I can’t recommend it, eating an anemone. Everything appears to be messy as you eat it raw. Rinsing barnacle parts out of my mouth was rather convenient! There is ample water as you would guess by now, and bits and pieces floated and dissipated right way. Today I take great pride in my fishing skills. Back then, not so much. I steal your fish. I laugh at myself and think maybe the sock fairy is now a distant cousin. Somehow, somewhere I became content living where I live and doing what I do.
After years without a haircut and with out a change of clothes I would cause great alarm should you spot me underwater. I take great pleasure in the thought of it happening, but know it is wrong so I don’t allow for it to happen. Back to the fish, I was screaming in frustration as I lunged and grabbed for them. I felt them mocking me, was I to become some sort of sea cow eating and grazing the barnacles and seaweed and the occasional anemone? I was completely out of my head like someone dangling a baggie in front of a junkie.
Good lord! I apologize, I must explain myself. It may sound grotesque to eat such things. I forget, I have been doing this for years, eating what I can and I imagine the thought does nothing for your palette. It's quite agreeable now, and I even look forward to it. I suppose I may even salivate with apprehension, but how would I know? It is just a part of who I am today and as normal as your meatball marinara dish. Yes, in the beginning it was wrong to me on many levels. Slimy and cold causing gag reflex. But dang, I had to eat right? There was a hunger eating the hunger inside myself. So I ate. You would too.
It was a normal day, as normal as normal was that day. I was grazing and glaring at the juicy fish that darted by, they seemed to know to stay away. But it was that time of day, and they were eating too. I watched one open its mouth and snap down on a bug, it was like lightning when it dove. Upon it’s decent it jerked to a sudden stop, and seemed to be fighting a great current. Flashing in the water and struggling with all of its might it changed direction. I couldn’t be seeing this. What the hell was happening? The other fish darted away; there was something not right. And then I heard the shouting. Excited cursing and shouting. It was I not too long ago, I thought to myself, that was shouting and dancing on the deck. I mean not really, but really. It was a man yelling from the deck of his boat. He had caught a fish, and at the end of the line it was struggling right in front of me. So I snapped the line with a loud underwater twang and bit off its head. A cloud of crimson erupted around my face and there was a burst of flavor in my mouth. I have never been a huge fan of fish until now. Uh-may-zing. The body of the fish flicked in my clutches and I heard protests and colorful profanity exploding from the surface and into the murky depths of my world. There was a brief silence, and then a tremendous explosion. What appeared to be icy lines appeared in my line of sight and spread in lazy fingers and then stopped. The fisherman was having a ninth degree tantrum and had apparently fired his gun into the water. What a baby. Another bite, more crimson cloudiness. More flavor and without the crunchy consistency as was present in the head bite, this one had meat and intestines. I loved it. I could feel it’s energy course through my veins and my body rejuvenate and repair mental fatigue. This was home for me now. Eating fish off of your line. A tinny splash, he was throwing beer cans at the water like it would bring his fish back. I highly dislike people like that. I mean I get riled when I don’t get my way, don’t get me wrong. But a blatant display of child like spoiled ignorance is enough to piss me off. Shoot at me, go ahead and shoot at me. But throwing beer cans? Uh-uh. Not on my watch. Granted I stole your fish, but the hell if I’ll stand…or float around while you litter and not do anything about it. I stuffed the two cans into my shirt. I followed his vessel, I ate two more of his fish and put three more discarded cans into my shirt in addition to watching twelve more shots get discharged into the water. I laughed and laughed as I listened to him get riled up on the surface. But dude, what’s with the littering? It’s my home; do I walk up to your door and throw garbage into your house? I mean seriously, it’s beautiful down here and I…reached into my shirt and pulled out a can. I am telling you right now, the can idea was brilliant. The cans were now of course full of water and heavy. I was beside myself and swam a circle in celebration. I launched the discarded water logged cans onto the deck of the boat, opposite the fisherman. The cabin blocked his line of sight, but I heard each one crash on the deck. It was a satisfying and necessary mischief. He’s lucky I didn’t rip out his fuel lines, which I learned later can be a fun activity for deserving disrespectful fisher people on hot sunny days, but that’s another story altogether. Back to douche bag. He drank a lot. I gave him back his empties. I think one hit him, but I can’t exaggerate. I mean I didn’t see it happen, I just heard a yelp. Perhaps he saw a can fly out of the water. The cans flying out of the water could cause a yelp, I do not know. I expected more cursing and cans returning to the water. I got the yelp, I got silence and he left. Looking back on it, he lost three fish. He drank a lot and threw a lot of cans into the water. They were all returned to his deck. For whatever reason he called it a day. I can’t imagine him trying to tell anyone what had happened.
I suppose I could protest, and I could get down on myself for finding myself in this predicament. I could try to seek help, but the time for help had passed me by a long time ago. As I settled into my daily activities, I found myself in total comfort. No loneliness, no need for human interaction. I was by this time adept at surviving in the deep blue sea. My senses had adapted quite nicely. I slept in a sea cave for protection from predators. My sight adjusted as well as my hearing. I explored far away places, deep and far. Pardon the pun, but I had become a drifter.
I have saved the lives of four people over the years and hunger for no glory nor do I feel the need for recognition. One person that I rescued saw me, and I imagine they insisted that they had been saved from the ocean by a merman. I’ll never know, but who would believe them? So the days go by and I swim and trudge and eat. I have not attempted to return to land, I get curious; I mean I daydream about it like I used to daydream about having great powers like flight. But it concerns me. What if I do get on land and forget where I came from? What would happen if this were all but a dream? My world would shatter yet again and I could not stand it. What if I landed on land and was then capable of flight like I used to dream of as a great power? How then to conceal myself while in the air? No, the sea is where I belong. Tormenting the disrespectful, eating fish and saving the lost and drowning. Should I someday come across you on one of your journeys, the sight may be so fantastic that your mind will disregard it as an unreality and erase it from your memory. I am not possible. I live under water now.
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