Swim to Survive

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Left to right: Christopher and Nico dry docked 

* minor cursing

December 10th, 2012

I always found pleasure in my underwater paradise. To swim beneath the surface of the sea and play among the life inside her wet wonderland has always gratified my need to relieve my stress from a long hectic day. The beauty of the ocean is as majestic as the sun that cast a glare of light off her vast canvass. Life down here is beautiful and can be considered in its own right, Nirvana.

The sea creatures are equally beautiful in the water in which surrounds them, encompassing them like a cocoon. Finding such beauty under the blanket of blue liquid is not rare. But if you heed the old saying, "stop and smell the roses," every now and again, you can marvel at how beautiful Mother Nature can create these sea life animals. Every part of their anatomy somehow flows with the basic needs that a species needs to survive here, that Nature herself has intricately placed the survival needs right where they belong so that they can survive in their environment.

If you don't believe me, you'll just have to come under the sea, to see heaven for yourself.

The live coral builds itself up from the seabed’s sandy foundation, like the Rocky Mountains that rise from the ground of the western United States, up towards earth’s hemisphere. But unlike those mountains of grey and brown rock, these coral are colorful like a rainbow. The rock like formation grows and forms into its odd shapes, as the edges of the reef reach up towards the glaring ultra violet rays produced from up above by the burst of sunshine sent down to them from the sun, as the light penetrates the oceans deep blue surroundings like sharp daggers and touching the corals rough surface as it fuels their growth.

The rocks form caverns so all sea forms can find safety and shelter from their predators. Or so they call lie in wait for their pray. But life perseveres. Life here goes on.

But I am far from their predator. I love to play in these rocks. My scuba gear allowing me to swim around in their watery playground, beyond my lung capacity, so I may watch the colorful fish play a game of peek-a-boo with me, because they are scared of my large presence. When actually, I'm in their way and I just really want to watch them play.

The only fish I can’t see are the ones that Mother Nature blessed with such color, to coordinate with the corals vibrant color, where they can hide right in front of my eyes. Like life, seeing is believing and if you can’t see them, are they there?

Their camouflage protects them from creatures that want to eat them. It's such a cruel world, in this water world of paradise, much like the land mass that I come from, where a predator can come along and change things in an instant. But despite the fact of a possible death, the fish continue to do what fish do, because well, life goes on.

Funny, I can find such beauty down here in their harsh environment, knowing that one of these fish, that bring me such joy, can meet a horrible end at any time and yet I use their beauty to escape the atrocities from my own world just a few feet above. Down here, in this water land it is truly, beauty and the beast. And up there, where I’m from, in another unforgiving world, life is truly a dog eat, dog world.

No matter where I am in my travels or how hard I try to lose myself in my scuba gear, I cannot hide from my fate or the past. It doesn’t matter how deep I dive in this sea or into the darkness of the ocean because the problems I have been trying to avoid are there waiting for me at the surface.

I decided to try and maintain a depth that a snorkel will allow me to see life from up above and hope that the clear blue water will show me the bigger picture of life with HD clarity and leave the tanks of air on the boat and forget diving into the past.

I figure I can stay in the shallow end of the lagoon and forget about the dangers of the ocean, because the less depth I have to deal with the better. And hopefully this area will allow me some sort of balance in my life with greater control that this shallow area has to offer.

Life can take over you and control how you function, like a current’s under toe pulling you in the direction it wants you to flow, and if you allow it to pull you in that direction it will dictate how you’re supposed to feel. And it’s so unfair when you feel like shit all the time because of the events that unfolded in your life. Those events are out of your control. Like the vast ocean, it’s hard to find cover from the evil that lurks out there in the beds of the coral reefs. Although I try to avoid life’s confrontations utilizing whatever camouflage that’s available at times it’s not enough.

Life is too short for bullshit.

The good thing is that I am a strong swimmer and life still seems to find me. Even though it wreaks havoc on me mentally and physically, like the surf that pounds a coast line and erodes the sandy beaches, I push on, towards the horizon and hopefully good things that are waiting for me.

But I swim damn it. I swim in my slice of ocean that has been carved out just for me through life’s lessons, time and age. I try to avoid the bad by leaving the worst moments behind me in my wake. But the task of leaving things behind can be daunting and I find myself where I left off because I allow it to drag me back to sea. In the thoughts of playing in the coral reefs is just a dream that I try to relive over and over but still, it’s just a dream.

You have to swim to survive. You have to swim to succeed. You have to swim to your dreams or risk being left behind. Ride the wave of life and leave the depths of the ocean for the fishes. Life up above is waiting.

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The Adventures of Captain Imperfecto/Born Again by Christopher P. Fusaro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at christopherfusaro.blogspot.com.