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Show water, you have to dive for it, but it's always there. I looked at the bay, a thumb-shaped outcrop to one side where people scaled the sharp black rock and jumped the twenty feet into the water, and imagined hundreds of Levi pockets resting on the sandy bottom alongside the shells and fluttering kelp, fish darting in and out, a snap for easy closure. But he was talking about something different, I soon realized, a pocket of safety, a pocket of calm. He showed me by running into the surf, into the face of a wave that threatened to crush him, and plunged into its heart. Seconds later, the wave now spent at my feet, he popped up in the calm water, waving as he made his way back to me. When the wave is too big, he said, holding his hand at shoulder-level, salt water dripping from his nose, his ears, the hair at his neck, when you are scared, just dive for the pocket, let the wave roll over you. What a lark, a gift, an offering from the sea itself. In the most dangerous of surf, the wave sucking water to feed its growing body, drawing you toward it, a space exists at the very center of the power where the water is calm and undisturbed. You have to go deep, though, he would tell me, to the bottom is best, and lobby against the physical properties of salt water. Above you the wave charges and boils. You can feel the pressure pushing down on you; water-wave tendrils grab at your ankles and hands, trying to draw you into the ocean's mighty works. Sometimes another wave is right behind, you have no time for a new breath, so you must hold onto that head of coral a little bit longer. While there was always a sense of mightiness as I waited for the wave to pass, clinging to the ocean's floor, I was never really afraid. I knew I was safe in that pocket, armed with a secret I carried with me each and every time I entered the water. 119 |