Apnea

Today would have been my father's 84th birthday. I miss him a lot, and often, but i never quite know how to express that. The essay i've put on his blog today explained a little to me why that is the  case. Part of it is this:

"We continuously need new words to express old experiences. And especially within the expression of those elemental experiences lurks the kitsch. This is what makes them inexpressible."

Here are some of the lovely people i get to play with in Dean's Blue hole:

This is Liv at the bottom plate





and this is Georgina



and Georgina being lovely on the platform



There is the ridiculously good-looking couple of Tomoka and Igor



and me on one of those rare occasions where i get to see a bottom plate at depth


(picture by Liv Philip)

and more commonly, me and my ass


(Picture by Liv Philip -to who i apologize)

There are those who don't believe in magic. They reckon it's not logical, not rational. A few years back i was walking down an old street when a beautiful loud noise made me turn my head, and towards me came bobbing over the cobblestones an Aston Martin DB5 -you know, the car James Bond drives in Goldfinger. My jaw dropped, i might have drooled. A traffic cop saw my expression and said: "It's just a car, you know.""No it isn't," i replied, "if that's just a car then Rembrandt is just paint, Handel just sound, life a variation of carbon, love a mere bunch of hormones." Well, that's what i wished i said, anyway -it took me a couple of hours to figure out why that 'just a car' attitude made me so mad. That kind of reductionism sucks all the joy and magic out of life, like expressing a good meal in terms of carbs and proteins.

Now i have the bizarre good fortune to be in a place that is magic, actual, factual magic. Dean's Blue Hole, Long Island. It is unfathomably beautiful



and magic happens there: every day people venture into that darkness on a single breath of air and reach depths no man thought possible until recently; scientist still can't really explain how they do it



it's enough to turn your world upside down



As usual, my dad said it better: "A is not A; if A = A, life shrivels to an erotic-less, urge-less, amorphous mass of banalities. Only through negation can we become speechless spectators of the great Presence, for which we live."

Magic works in mysterious ways: i have no underwater camera capable of capturing it, but a friend does, and on this magic day, he graciously lent it to me, allowing me to not only become a speechless spectator of the magical Spirit of the Blue Hole, but photograph it. To all those dull deconstructing rationalists, she says hi

Turns out that paradise makes its creatures quite bonkers. The wasps are twice as long



because of a champagne bottle in the middle



there are bugs with sticks as eyebrows



and some with carrots on their heads



the dragon flies wanna hump pegs



and the spiders have green asses with dots, white skull heads, and yellow legs with black furry pompoms



plus they're huge



and of course i'm gonna like orange butterflies, but this one took it to the next level: orange fur and even his eyes were orange



what's really crazy cute though, is the lizards. Not only do they hang at strange angles



they play peek-a-boo

Here's the first of i hope many Bahamas videos