~"I want more wine."~

I don't think that I ever imagined diving on the Great Barrier Reef.

I'm not certified to dive.  That's a nutty thing, I mean - my lab studies Caribbean corals and we've hung out around sunken ships.  We talk about bottlenose dolphins. 

In other words, there has been opportunity.  I love the water - so, I suppose, there has been little to no impediment to my learning how to dive.

I just never did it.

(Which is ashame.  I know, I know - I still can).

So a friend and I go out on a boat to snorkel on the GBR.  Onboard was a woman who had taken the same boat out a day before, and who had dived for the first time.  She was persuasive.  More than persuasive, she was enamored with what she saw down there.  How could we resist?  We were on the other side of the planet - and it was the Great Barrier Reef, for Christ's sake.  I'd like to say that I was brave while they were loading me up with weights and the tank and everything else required - but I wasn't, I was pretty terrified.  Then they shuffle you over to the end of the boat, and tell you to step off the end (yeah, right) - which I did, and thanks to bouyancy control I came back up to the surface quickly.  They had two horizontal bars at the end of the boat - one about a foot down, one perhaps five feet down - and they allowed you to get comfortable breathing at the first bar and then they moved you down to the second bar.  Unfortunately my mask was leaking pretty badly, so I had to come back up to the surface and get equipped with a different one.  It worked better. 

As quickly as I was back in the water, I was back down to the second bar - and before I had much time to think the 'dive buddy' that took you down had grabbed ahold of my left arm and was taking me out and further down.  We were down for about 30 minutes to a depth of about 6 meters.  The other person being taken down was having problems with her ears - she couldn't clear them and started to panic - so we went back up to the surface where a small boat came to get her.  However the 'dive buddy' and I went back down -  and all I can say is that it was amazing.  I'm thrilled that I did it.  There were giant clams and schools of angelfish over a foot tall, royal blue starfish and a large turtle hiding amongst the corals (partially seen in the imagine above, if you look carefully at the top center).  The corals themselves were just all sorts of colors, exquisite shades of golds and greens and blues - the images that I captured with a little disposable underwater camera don't come close to doing them justice.  But I love the images nonetheless.

~~~~~

And I'm back.  Sorting through a full INBOX and neglecting a pile of mail on my kitchen counter.  Trying to wrap my head around work and where I was -- (which wasn't such a good place to be) -- still in denial that my grass is a foot high and that rabbits have taken up residence (much to Stan's wishes, and perhaps to mine - since more rabbits generally mean fewer large snakes).  The tropics are active and today meetings started up - yes, meetings.  What do you do?  I go to meetings. 

But today there was some talk of science.  We talked about a predominant band in a protein gel (a 'hypothetical' protein), about a student's two outlines for manuscripts, and about how we need to come up with a plan for distinguishing phylotypes of an organism we are studying - there were talks behind closed doors and talks in the hallway, talks in my office and one in the parking lot.  Yes, I am back.  Today during lab meeting Katherine read to us a wonderful poem - a poem about a wooden creature who wanted to do more than what was expected of her.  Perhaps, last Friday, I did more than what I expected of myself - and yes, I want more wine too.

(What a treat it was to see this new world through my own eyes, and not through descriptions and images shown to me!) 

~~~~~

Not Paint and Wood by Martin Espada

I saw her at Neruda’s house,

carved a century ago

to keep vigil over the waves

from the prow of a ship,

with great brown eyes

and hair in a whirl,

now hovering silently

above the poet's table.

That night at the bar

she appeared at my elbow,

the same eyes, the same hair,

not paint and wood but flesh.

He likes for me to be still,

she grinned. I don't like to be still.

I want to climb the steps

at Macchu Picchu.

I want to talk about poetry all night.

I want more wine.

~~~~~

Martin Espada teaches at Amherst.  His most recent collection was a Pulitzer finalist.  Gary Soto has said, "Martín Espada has chosen to go outside the self-absorbed terrain of most contemporary poets into a landscape where others—bus drivers, revolutionaries, the executed of El Salvador—sit, walk, or lie dead 'without heads.' There's no rest here. We're jostled awake by the starkness of these moments."

~~~~~

You see, Neruda collected figureheads and wrote a series of poems about them.  (I'd love to visit that collection one day!  Is that possible?).

Here is one such poem.

To a Ship’s Figurehead (Elegy) by Pablo Neruda

From: ‘Canto general’

From the sands of Magellan we salvaged you, exhausted

voyager, immobile

beneath the storm your sweet twofold breast so many times

defied dividing itself between your nipples.

We lifted you again over the Southern waters, but now

you were the passenger in darkness, of angles, one

with the wheat and the metal you guarded

on the wide water, enveloped by oceanic night.

Today you are mine, goddess whom the giant albatross

grazed with its wingspan extended in flight,

like a cloak of music conducted in rain

by your blind wandering eyelids of timber.

Rose of the sea, bee more pure than dream,

almond-woman who from the roots

of a holm-oak peopled with cantos

made yourself form, force of the nest-filled foliage,

mouth of tempests, delicate sweetness,

that could go conquering the light with its thighs.

When the angels and the queens born with you,

covering themselves with moss, slumbered, fated

to the immobility the dead guard with honour,

you climbed to the narrow prow of the ship

and angel and queen and wave, you were the earth’s tremor.

Man’s shudderings climbed to your

noble tunic with its apple-wood breast.

while your lips oh sweetness! were moistened

by other kisses worthy of your wild mouth.

Beneath strange nights your waist let

fall the pure burden of the ship into the waves

cutting a path through the sombre extent

of overturned flame, of phosphorescent honey.

The wind opened its bag of tempests,

the unbound metal of its groans,

and the light at dawn received you trembling

in the ports, kissing your moist diadem.

Sometimes the trembling vessel heeled

when you halted your path through the sea,

like a heavy fruit that breaks off and falls,

a dead mariner whom the spume,

and the pure motion of time and ship, receive.

And you alone among all the faces

submerged by menace, plunged into barren sadness,

received the scattered salt-brine on your mask,

and your eyes retained the salty tears.

More than one wretched life slipped from your arms

into an eternity of funereal waters,

and the touch of the dead and the living

wore away your heart of ocean timber.

Today we have salvaged your form from the sand.

Finally you were destined for my eyes.

You slumber, perhaps, a slumberer, perhaps you are dead, a dead one:

your motion has finally forgotten the sighing

and the wandering splendour has ceased its journey.

Anger of ocean, blows of the heavens have circled

your proud head with cracks and fissures,

and your face rests like a conch,

with wounds that mark your swaying brow.

For me your beauty holds all of the perfume,

all of the wandering corrosion, all its dark night.

And in your raised breast of lamp or of goddess,

swelling turret, immobile love, life lives.

Salvaged, you sail with me, until that day

in which they let fall what I am into the spume.

~~~~~

 

Comments

[Pam/Digging]

What a fantastic opportunity and adventure. You were right to dive at the Great Barrier Reef, despite your fear. When an opportunity of that nature knocks, you throw the door open!

[Kim]

Wow... amazing. Both the images and the poetry.

I think that you were brave to do a dive like that, persuaded while you were already on a boat. Even if you don't feel that you were, quite.

[Kim]

By the way, thanks to you and this post I finally succumbed to purchasing a compilation of Pablo Neruda poems this evening. (Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970.) And I couldn't resist picking up a translation of some of Ranier Maria Rilke poems, too, while I was in the poetry section. (The Selected Poetry of... edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell.)

:)

[Pam]

Pam/Digging: Yep, it was an opportunity. I'm still thrilled that I did it!

Kim, one can never go around with Nerdua. Or Rilke. But Neruda - his 'Odes to Things', his love sonnets - his poems about the sea (they're almost all about the sea) - they bring me to my knees. I hope you enjoy them.

[Les]

Sometimes part of our brains say "no, I don't think so", while another says "Yes, there is no way I am going to miss this". I am glad you said yes. What an opportunity! Don't worry about the grass or the meetings, you need time to process your experiences and a glass of wine will help.

[Pam]

Les, yes - I am so glad I didn't miss that opportunity! It was quite a trip for sure (and hey, I've got Australian wine to drink).

[LittleMike]

I was diving in Cairns the week you all were there. I saw gaggles of you all walking up and down the Esplanade. The diving that week was a little less than 100% spectacular because of the less than perfect weather, but I'm with you.. I can't believe I was diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Up on Ribbon Reef 10, the corals were in great shape, however, as we got closer to civilization (Norman Reef), there was a ton of damage (some from careless divers, and some from environmental factors). It is a shame that so much of the reef is damaged. Next time you are there, go North, see the beauty that is up there.

--LittleMike

[Pam]

Little Mike: Yeah, it was amazing. I still sometimes just sit and try to remember it all - they said the clarity wasn't so good (the water was choppy) - but it was still amazing. Sounds like you guys did alot of diving at different places - I kept looking for signs of coral disease, but only saw a little bit (we're studying an organism that has been proposed to be he causative agent of white syndrome at GBR).

[openid.aol.com/linzemup]

"the images that I captured with a little disposable underwater camera don't come close to doing them justice. "

Ughh, yeah, they can be a pain. You got some good shots though, I've come out with vast swaths of blackness before that weren't even identifiable. I did find this site http://disposableunderwatercamera.org before my last trip which really helped.

Thanks for the article and pics, good stuff.