Aqueous Transmission

Before I was born, I drowned.

Those first years of life, I was scared of water. I defrosted the freezer by accident (never press large red buttons) and I let the water overflow from the tub (so much that it leaked into the kitchen below). Water and I did not appear to mix well without catastrophic consequences and floods.

I did not learn to swim until I could see what was underneath. With a snorkel mask, seeing, and breathing, I took to water.

And now, I find solace in the horizon of the ocean. Opening, possibility.

When I learned to surf, I was amazed how little actually separated me from the wave. I was actually riding the wave. A precise instant caught to move in time with the ocean, quickly caught, easily lost.

Aqueous vocabulary has infiltrated, flooded, seeped into my language. I wallow, I plunge, I float, I immerse, even when far away from the sea.

Where earth meets water, where opposites connect, in fluidity, in constancy and simultaneous flux, this is where I feel closest to truth. Everything changes, nothing is the same and far asea, a constant possibility.