Mingo Cay

Diving into the water off Mingo Cay was like slipping into a bathtub of warm sapphire gin. Below me, corals reached toward the sunlight, and tangs, grunts and angelfish swirled about like leaves blown in the wind. I grin into my regulator as the words to "Octopuses Garden" hum in my head. Slowly I fall towards the bottom, leveling out at 54 feet, and I spin a couple of barrel rolls just for the sheer joy of being underwater again. I must resemble a barber-pole with my orange and blue wetsuit, but I don't care: I'm exulting in the moment, in my freedom, in my escape from the surface to this beautiful hidden world. I'm tail-end Sam: last one in the water, so I join the group of sea-trek junkies and after a count, we're on our way to the beginning of the dive. This will be a drift-dive, where Mother Ocean cradles you in her strong arms and pushes you along in one of her currents. Charlie, our guide, has a few things to show us first, including the recent trawler shipwreck on the slope-looks like someone misjudged the rocks and current, with the hull smashed in and laying on its side like a broken toy. Already the sea has put its stamp of ownership on the wreckage, with sponges and soft coral already beginning to bud on the hull: in a couple of years, it'll look like the rest of the reef. We examine the wreck for a moment or two, then round the base of the reef and are pulled into the current. No kick needed except to stay on course, I fly like Superman's slow-poke cousin, in the company of a school of baby barracuda-only a foot or so long at the biggest, their teeth looking comically big in their pike-jaws. The reef is all reds and orange and imperial purple, with bright yellow brain-coral scattered about, Elkhorn and sea-fingers...Starfish litter the bottom like fallen constellations, and anemones wave their green tentacles like boas round the neck of a dancer...Coming to a sand-plain, what originally I thought was turtle-grass turns out to be hundreds of grass-eels all feeding on whatever is small enough that they can grab from the current. Such a wealth of life! A nudibranch inches along the bottom, burrowing in the muck for food, and as unaware of me as the sky above the stars. I move closer to a coral head, and am rewarded with the sight of a moray stretched around a bulbous growth, its brown speckles showing the garishness of the red of the coral It's mouth rhythmically opens and shuts allowing all a sight of it's gleaming long teeth- a fearsome sight, but a false fear, as it pulls itself away from the aquatic visitors drifting towards it. At the moment, it disappears from sight, a pair of hawksbill turtles meander into view like two old men out for a stroll in the warm morning light. They look befuddled that we're there, but munch away at a stalk of greenery anyway-breakfast in the presence of bubbling sea-monsters. With nary a backward look, off they go after a while, swimming with the current; they're lost in the distance as we drift along. I turn another barrel roll and see the sunlit surface above me, and I laugh silver bursts in the blue, the joy expands as it moves upward, and I am at peace.

Gravity Again

In the Universe, energy is converted into matter, matter into energy, and everybody is happy. One Universal phenomenon is Gravity. I have to give it a capital “g” because anything that has it in for you as badly as it does for me deserves some special recognition.

One day I was happily skipping along in my knickers, knee socks, and sailor jumper, my straw hat brave with blue ribbon, an all-day sucker in my hand-the very picture of childhood innocence, countenance unlined by care, unworn by circumstance. I spied a swing, and it was a swing of the old school of swing; before these marshmallow and cotton batting things you find now in these degenerate times. In my day, they built them on good solid cement pads, out of good American steel, and heavy linked hand-forged chain. The seat was a sort of rubberized canvas, such as once found on square-riggers in days of yore. Had someone put down the matting and pillows one sees now we would have scoffed-indeed, loud and derisive would have been our scoffing! I sat my innocent behind in the good solid canvas seat, and began the motion-forward, then tuck the legs behind you, and back. Soon, I had a good arc begun, and I delighted in the breeze whispering through my delicate curls. Wider and wider grew the arc, stronger blew the breeze, and soon, I was in swinging rapture! Alas, my joy was not to be a long lasting joy, as when I really noticed that at a certain point of the trajectory, I was above the bar my swing was secured to-a distance some 12 imperial feet from the ground. I was not a timorous child, indeed, not a child that was faint of heart or failing in a certain amount of pluck-however, I was, shall we say uneasy, at the thought of being quite so high, at quite the speed I was going, and in fact, at this point as I reached the apogee at that leg of my journey, my straw hat, gay with ribbons, blew from my curls. Alack, as I turned, my all-day sucker joined it on the ground below.

Acceleration is seldom an “all at once” phenomenon. Gravity and Momentum put down their pipes, have a short discussion of the “’Ello, ‘Ello’ ‘Ello: What have we here?” variety, then roll up their sleeves, flex their thews, and begin their work. They are artisans who believe in the job, I am here to tell you.

Showing remarkable presence of mind in one so young, I took firm grip upon the chains of my swing, and the first zephyr of wind began its climb.

I am now of a man’s estate, and have traveled many different places upon this weary, wicked globe, and experienced the Tremont anta, the Monsoon, and Hurricane. I have seen the mighty Tornado, and felt the giant breath of the Typhoon.

They are as nothing to the wind I experienced that day upon that swing set.

My little eyes were cruelly pressed to the back of my skull, my mouth stopped by my tongue being held by the wind in my mouth, not a sound could I make as I moved inexorably forward, faster, faster, and yet faster. When I felt myself nothing but a blue blur shooting skyward, I was suddenly at rest, I was gazing into a clear blue sky, with mares-tails and a small bird winging along in God’s Great Kingdom of Air. The moment was forever etched into my child’s mind. Alas, it was a moment all too short, and I began my journey back. My eyes, instead of cowering in my skull were now attempting to leave and explore. My tongue loosed from its cruel oppression, now allowed free expression of feeling: I fear I set my feet in their ever downwards spiral in that moment, for I blasphemed and blasphemed again. Could a sailor’s life be far off from such a step? Backward, I hurled, like Zeus’ thunderbolt, a veritable comet-an ill omen’d star, as Horace once wrote. Then forward again, to meet my destiny, in the sound of ripping canvas, and the embrace of Gravity, pulling me to Earth’s loving Bosom.

Oh, How the Mighty Hath Fallen Sayeth King David: and Too Bloody Right Sayeth I. They found me at the bottom of a deep depression, my curls askew, my jumper in ribbons, and wind burned cheeks aflame. To this day, the village uses that hole as a well, and a cautionary tale of Pride going before a Fall.