Oh, These Shifts in Context

Plight

emgrohs — Fri, 23 May 2014 10:54:00 GMT

The ocean, an overwhelming sight by day, is an unnerving abyss by night. With only our flashlights, Michelle and I swim together into the darkness while the others, already finished, shiver on the beach.

Though the reefs have been massacred over the past decade, they seem to be busy underwater cities when we snorkel each day; now, though, there is nothing to see but sand... and nothing to the sea but sand. This makes the darkness more ominous: would we rather be alone in the water or unaware of company? After thirty minutes of nervously dancing our lights through the water, we spot a sleeping Southern Stingray, a huge kite with eyes, camouflaged almost perfectly on the sea floor below us. When we stick our heads out of the water to swap ooh’s and ah’s, we hear mumbling in the distance, which we trace to another snorkeler calling us over.

Her hand points underwater to a large, C-shaped rock. In the curve of the C floats a resting Lionfish. Its glorious full-body mane of striped pectoral fins and spiky fin rays moves gently, up and down, in the water, like locks of loose hair. Though it does nothing, we float above it at a safe distance, moving only our hands to resist drifting away, until the insulation of our wetsuits ceases to keep us warm in the water.

We return to shore, grateful for the things we have seen but weighed down by the sight of a nearly empty ocean. We fear we have glimpsed the future of this world.

Some days as I swim I imagine being yelled at underwater. A fish pops its head out of a nest of half-bleached coral, shakes a balled-up fin in my face, and opens its mouth to let out a perfect, Moe Howard-esque, “Why I Oughta!”

A deserved sentiment.

I think: this week I am a delegate of Humankind’s crusade against mystery. Fearful love of the unknown leads to rabid exploration, forced submission, then deadly acquisition. Our need to discover conceals a powerful disregard for the things we have deemed worth discovering. The idea: let’s “appreciate” a thing until it no longer exists. This is called The Right of Man to Know About Things.

We were drawn here by a fascination with the reefs, a love of them. On the shore, on a beach of smooth gray pebbles, facing the infiniteness of the ocean and the night sky, I must ask myself how I came to be here. I am caught between the cynicism of a Leave No Trace advocate who believes that nearly everything leaves a trace and the passion of a person whose happiness lies in travel.

Any open-eyed adventurer can see that the world is quickly changing. The degradation of the environment is certainly a call to action. Now, we consider ourselves experts, having visited this island for ten days; we consider ourselves ambassadors, at least for as long as our tans will last. As we leave, I can hear the islands demand that we not let the memory of their plight be washed out of our clothing with the salt and sand.

As I watch St. John disappear from the window of the plane, I think that perhaps The Right of Man to Know About Things can be balanced by The Duty of Explorer to Defend What is Explored... Perhaps, this is why we write.

En Route

emgrohs — Fri, 23 May 2014 10:29:00 GMT

We are on a train. An apocalyptic gray bench, a plank of wood on two legs, sits alone in a field to our left. A North Carolina field, covered in mossy-green grass swishing in the wind, soft, like baby’s hair. Crumbling buildings float in peripheral vision, trailers, forgotten dogs on chains in front yards, chickens wandering the neon woods. This is our home but we rarely see this. Trains take people through the backwoods, through the forgotten places. Through realities that we forget easily when we return to civilization and progress. A man in long johns and suspenders sits on his riding mower in his front yard, still. It is good that we are here, moving through still places.

The conductor, a short man with gray facial hair, has a tattoo on his forearm: “Sola Gratia.” He wears a silver bracelet on the same wrist and he enforces the rules of the train with an iron hand. He makes a man move his bag from the empty seat beside him:

“Sir,” he says, “you paid for one seat. So you get one seat.”

I am afraid of him as he scans my ticket. But respectfully so.

Sola Gratia: Grace Alone.

The images outside of the glass send the word “poignant” to the tip of my fingers. A rusted pipe that leads to nowhere, hangs in an empty parking lot: the remains of an industry. The white hearse next to Roy’s Auto Palace; the tiny, blue-gray church with the play-ground right next to the cemetery, and the children’s mural with the colorful paintings. A green house in a field with rows, perfectly even rows, of dirt pyramids. Then Elon University, the first glimpse of well-maintained buildings, sturdy streetlamps, well-loved and small white-paneled houses with university flags. Another factory, a parking lot full of wooden crates, rows and rows of empty wooden crates.

Under the gray sky, greens look deeper, rust more definitive. Fallen trees, like collapsed men, occasion the long lines of forest and abandoned landscaping that we pass. The people and the houses wear blues, the other buildings grays and browns and rusty reds, the rest of the world deep browns and greens. Patches of wild flowers in fields give them the appearance of balding, leaving the scalp of the earth revealed, the young growth looks hopeful but lonely. Ponds and creeks sit still, stagnant, under layers of pollen and other flora debris. Telephone poles remind me of internet, of cyber cafes, of robots and instant information and cities and connectivity. But here there is silence, distance. That wooden fence has been graffitied: a purple octopus and indecipherable writing circles the house inside the fence.

Dry dust roads and small clearings where trees have been burned or cut down remind me of South Africa, of the dry season in the savannah and bumpy van rides for hours, dust that gets through glass and coats your clothing and your throat and tangles in your hair. Empty green fields remind me Delaware, where I always had the urge to run, to be in the distant middle of open land, swim in oceans of wheat and tall grass.

From the window I see parking lots filled with the ancient frames of old automobiles and a place called Joey’s Kitchen. Everything here is named after its owner. A dog walks along the street without any purpose or concern. The high school has blue roofs, a cluster of identical buildings and a single baseball field. We are stopping in Greensboro soon. Any minute now. Churches, factories and warehouses, diners, and cemeteries: the life cycle of a small town, of every small town, reveals itself to me on this short journey. I seem to be surrounded by the ends of things, by things and people waiting, mostly unbothered, to end.

The train carries us through—never to—these places.

The World Waiting

emgrohs — Tue, 13 May 2014 11:18:17 GMT

Beneath the surface waits a Technicolor dream. Parrotfish are richly colorful, art with the most vibrant oil paints, and with silly buckteeth and cartoonish faces. The Blue Parrotfish, in particular: a cartoon sidekick, generally has the look of a well-meaning idiot. They sleep in force fields of mucus at night, wander the coral by day, eating things human eyes can’t see off of the surface of the sunken brains of long-dead giants. Underwater reds reveal themselves when caught by a streak of light. The Slippery Dick, the subject of our giggles ashore, is, down here, streaks of silver, maroon, and sky; nothing to laugh at. The Rock Beauty, aptly named, in conversation with its neighbors, other damsels and angels of gold and purple, discusses the allocation of some algae. Soon, and with great civility, they decide to share. Staghorn and Elkhorn stretch antlers into open water and Finger Coral reach out to touch fish as they meander past. Sea Cucumbers contentedly do nothing at all, while startled Peacock Flounder skid atop the sand, then settle again like dust, and a school of royal Blue Tang wander around with no particular destination in mind.

Before donning my snorkeling gear and walking off of the Caribbean coast I have to pause. I have to count my breaths, to reason against my inner fatalist. With closed eyes I stand on the beach of pebbles, roasting in the sun in my layers of neoprene, curling and uncurling my fingers, nails digging into my palms. Distant but heavy memories of the bottom of a pool, of flailing in the water in panic, of feeling consciousness begin to slip away, play in my mind.

And then I open my eyes. Goats hop along the island cliffs to my left, leaping up and down the sharp rocks even as waves crash and bubble into white foam just below them. A hundred feet offshore some true seaman sails, casting his ship into the wind at impossible angles, yet never losing control. Mushroom-gray pelicans fly lazily, dive bomb the water without warning, then emerge with a full gullet and float proudly on the surface.

The daring of this paradise’s inhabitants is contagious. I can hardly imagine that world below the water but I know that it waits—or rather, that I wait for it. With my final deep breath I allow the power of the ocean to become my strength rather than the great fear it has so long been. I wade into the abyss and paddle away into my Technicolor awakening.