Anchored Drifting

Like the unfelt infinity of a hill’s curve; distance extrapolating. The reef continues on, generating, compounding upon itself: forward in every direction I look. Endlessly. And emptily sits only the pocked skeletons, barren and devoid of the normal cluster. I’ve been here before. I can't keep away from here. The water is hot and inundated with diffuse light; the porous and bread-like rocks translucent to what seems like a flat sun wrapping circumferentially. It feels paradoxically as if the reef is somehow orbited by a towering star. As I swim the sprawl reorients to move forward with me and at moments I feel as if a bird riding with the stratified ribbons of terracotta earth stacking along steep cliffs. It feels as if an infinite mess of world compacted down so that there is at once, again, a singular axis upon which to move. And then as quickly as it has come it’s gone. I am again returned to float in the open water.

I think I am free; out amongst the sweltering seagrass sweating with algae in the same shallow heat. Some long-buried part of me, always working subconsciously, is pulling at my legs; like some immense thalassophobia telling me to run, and yet I’m still stuck in the current with little treading. I drift along, spinning my wheels. The mess of marine lawn is patchy and at times I see movement in the bright eyespots of sand. The serpentine strands lace together in shifts, part of some stratified rhythm that keeps each part of them pulling in different directions. Nothing - but the sway. And I rock along with it. Trapped. 

 How long is it really to shore? How long now before I tire? And before I again miss the leathery mimicry against the rocks? Or the clumps of coral swaying suspiciously in sync? The weight of my tanks is bulbous and I bounce against it as I swim. The straps, like ligaments stretch, and hold, and after the seemingly days that I’ve been out here I no longer can get my mind to recognize some discrete line between my flippers and feet. I should’ve run out of air within an hour or two, but it’s been so long now that my terror has subdued to mild shock, and morbid wonder.  

Wonder, specifically I guess, at the entrapment. How in the sea I am a vertical thing forced into omnidirectionality. That with no direction but forward it is oh so easy to become lost upon a reef that seemingly generates endlessly: a crescent at the horizon. I am lost in my own fragile construction of where I am, and towards what end of me the days rise on to. How kaleidoscopically this thing mesmerizes me. 

I seem to be back at where I first dropped in, where the boat had been sitting like a shadowy pupil watching me descend, a long anchor. By every inclination this mottled rock and the one that I saw first as the seafloor pressed out of the salty-haze, are the same one: about nearly thirty feet and oddly boughed out in the middle like insectoid pincers or a forking tree. And yet it’s not easy to trust which time I first saw it. As just about each time I find myself back here the boat feels to have drifted off a bit further into memory and the only thing holding me stably in place anymore is that god damn rock. As if, ironically, from the land I am trapped by those terrestrial jaws.  

Yet at least for now I am back seemingly among the clutter of life. Schools of fish amble atop the seabed like tufts of seed blown across a meadow. The conch shells that hide beneath the knotting turtle grass shift lackadaisically as if haunted by the unseen. Among them lay the shells of crustaceans, picked clean, small holes drilled through their stiff bodies. Around that large pincering monolith a Goliath Grouper, with smug expression, chases what to those other schools might seem a coconut. And gradiently, above it all, I feel some sort of sweet kinship with this White-Tip that cruises beside me. As if he too, though looking hungrily unbothered, finds comfort in the fluxing sprawl of it all; as if something that originated long ago in an ocean similarly full, but biologically skewed to animals of flatter geometries and slower affects, selected for us to seek the cluster. And looking over I assume the shark, trapped in the polite smirk of his jaws, is smiling at the discombobulating feeling of the back and forth of life and death, the push and pull between empty space and the gravitational densities of those places full; of the atom-like confluence of life and the ways that by coming together it continues and by continuing it comes together. Becoming, though directionless, something moving actively forward. 

And yet I sway without plan. Aware of this beautiful grand gracefulness with no application for my current immobility. This could be another imitation, another illusory sensory suite among the other times it has bit me. Some venoms causing it, I think? In the end, it’s what I was looking for. Nine arms, a host of dark centered suckers riddling each. It had even been conveniently cooperative in displaying the same wrinkling pattern of blue and green as in the video NOAA provided for us, when I first saw it. As they can practically mold themselves to be a mobile parody of whatever it is in the area. They called them Brain Squid after the way their mantles had only been seen presented with soft, flowing wrinkling and the occasional raise of papillae that look as if oil dripping upwards and out. “Squid” was chosen more from a notoriety of name than an accuracy. They had about two solid videos of them; a dozen more slightly dubious where the animal was more of a smudge than a discrete group of pixels; and a host of paper-mache type photoshop from divers and amateur cryptozoologists. 

In a way I’m a wonderful researcher. I found the seemingly cryptic cryptid off the clock, diving on my own. But I guess that doesn’t even feel as if it matters right now. Maybe anymore. Funny how easily the mind reorients, building a frame around the new. Far off, like a small man inside my head using my ears as bullhorns, I can hear Franklin, my supervisor, easy and calm saying something with his responsible sincerity like:

“I really wouldn’t have gone out alone, but that’s bold of ya. Nice to have a buddy though in case something happens.”

I know Franklin. And I avoid the thought of my parents, my partner for godsake. The thought of death has long receded from my mind, though. It’s been something like 10 times that I’ve been bit now, I highly doubt any animal this inefficient at subduing prey or its predator has stuck around long in the wild. And yet, evolution has no goal. If they’re around it’s simply because they happen to be and have been lucky enough in the “grand sorting”.

It’s almost comical at this point, how well they ambush me. Once, I pulled my backup respirator to my face, only a second too late realizing that it was orange instead of yellow and that underneath ran thick chords of muscle. The bite was drilling and sharp in my neck. Another time, I swam too close to that too familiar rock and as a piece of it chipped off it trailed behind and bit my leg. At this point I’ve collected a bite on just about every segment of my body, and when I check they are still there after each experience. 

And so I float. No need to entice any of them. But I guess, where do I have to go anyway. The boat is gone and at the surface the water holds flat seemingly forever. Everytime I am simply back where I started, as if the sun has risen again and the progress I made must start anew. 

But what else can I do? Besides move? So like a beacon, I swim towards the rock, giving a wide berth, and back to where I know the shore was. My neck is encumbered by the bulk of the harness and tanks, so I swim with my head only really able to swivel like a security camera. I let the paranoia seeping up keep me alert, and slowly my eyes start to animate still images into crawling scenes. The grass bed wriggles and streams like eels clumsily atop each other, till at bulbous rocks the eels reorient to be the exploratory arms of a cephalopod. The gelatin muffins of anemones look like sad impersonations, and their tentacles like impressive papillae. I swear out of the dusty matrix ahead I can see shadows arising towards me; that in the noisy emptiness of open ocean my mind would rather see the squid than to see nothing at all. 

And yet soon I see the sandy fencing, and am in the soft cul-de-sac before the incline of a sandbar. I was here on what? The fourth or fifth time? In this sort of playhouse desert sand dollars and urchins sport dyes of purple and pink. They polka-dot the bunching fabric of the seafloor, and like explorers only the urchins alpinely summit the bar with their spikes. At the top of the sand bar more shells, this time the hollowed out urchins. Dead and their color dripped back into the world. What a nice allegory.

Last time there was a piling, a soft looking amalgam, of urchin shells that in a harrowing moment were reanimated and lunged upon me as some sort of anti-zombie: a brain fighting against food. This time everything looks normally spread against the topographical bell. As a kid I would always skim the solid concrete as I swam against the bottom of the pool and I now resist the urge. Some miasma of Franklin’s responsibility keeping me afloat. Still my eyes are playing tricks on me, and from the top of the sand bar, which crests just a couple feet below the surface I am convinced several times that I am seeing the flick of something wispy. At one point the spotted wing of a stingray passes flatly looking like a wet towel with a darkened sand’s hue. And as I reach the top, I slow; extra vigilant. 

I guess the worst that can happen is I get picked up and put back at the start right. We don’t feel all that much pity for the rat restarting the maze. What else does he have to do? So I dig myself in and crest the hill to simply find among the urchin graveyard a new reef. Stingrays and crabs, mostly, moving across the barren summit: one catching, one scavenging, and the third -aforementioned- preyed upon. The carpeting sand swarms with shifting-tan discs, coalescing with the dizzying disco-scrawl of sunspots. 

Like a pirate map, I’ve envisioned the milestones frequently: sandbar, dropoff, and then the whale carcass -which does not add up to being there- on the seafloor’s way back up. Past that somewhere is the shore, I assume. But, I have to say: that whale, the couple times I’ve made it there, hasn’t been reassuring. 

And here I am at step two: dropoff. The white cupping of the sand sinks, stretching the light gradiently towards a deep, abyssal pupil, where the waves are stretched so thin it is as if they are no longer there. As if twitching, I can see rubble and puffs of sand aroused from the wall scattering down into that void. It spikes my heart rate for a moment as I wonder if these might be more squid. But, none seem to go anywhere but that nightly erasure, so I continue out across the bowl. In placebo, I tell myself I can feel the growing height which I float over, and begin to follow carefully the path straight across, hoping to not teeter towards those depths. Like an acrobat overcome, I find I can barely look down. And in this sightlessness become piercingly aware again of my place in the water. Open on all sides, as if I can feel the squids around me in infinitesimal trajectories; rising like splintering geysers from below or a shuttlecock drifting down onto my back. 

Time feels contracted. It’s maybe a couple minutes before I am at the resurfacing of the sand and a whale carcass. The dead whale is another, and its own nexus, of swarming critters, but for whatever reason it looks misplaced to me. This is something I should be seeing on a deep sea drone, not this shallow. Or at least I thought. I know in the deep ocean they are essentially the sure fire way to find octopuses, which is of course reassuring, but I can’t make anything out from up here, and so they all move like blotchy maggots across the ribbing set of the flesh-tattered whale. And as the sand continues to climb out of the blue static I see a second whale off to my left, and then a third further up and directly ahead. I freeze and start to wonder if the seemingly miniscule bumps further down are whales or simply erratic promontories. These new whales, however, look nearly untouched, and just now realizing how close I am to the end of my rope, my heart is beating out of my chest. I might just make it past, save for some unseen buzzing of these eldritch hornets. 

Slowly I make my way forward. I pull my wetsuit to the limits of its stretching to cover as much free skin as possible. I see no squid, and again my vision is unsettlingly still. I crave for the whales to be alive with something, just so that I can know that that something is there. And as I pass cruisingly over, its white belly unveils like the slow spread of a door. Nothing. I pick up my legs’ awkward thrusting as I near the next sand bar. This is the furthest I’ve made it and for all I know these whales are what attracts them, or maybe just the reef in general. But that's back there. I am just about to reach the other side, a plain of wrinkling sand unbroken by any life, and only a few bulbous rocks out in the distance. 

As the small lip after the drop off rises and then falls back to flat I giddily swim just above the bottom, rising with it. My alternate respirator, dangling across my chest, scrapes the bottom and I reach down to keep it off. But as if tickled the sand sifts slightly. I stare as if my eyes unfocused for a second and reach down to touch the bottom to find the bottom spongy and thewy. It jostles, and with a torrential slipping bands of white flesh cover and uncover themselves. I take off now, rising in the water and watching as everything flows and folds beneath me. The whole lip of the bowl behind me begins to curl towards the center, and as I jerkingly rush forward the floor before me splinters. A vast, tapering strip beneath me; the land thrusts mammothly upwards. Spiraling upon itself it seems from a tip so far, unseen. The water, as if paying some gravitational debt swells and is sloshed back growing to become a familiar abyss above me. Yet in menacing white plumage, the barrage of the funneled and pooling water continues downwards. In the flood I am helplessly swept. My respirator is ripped from my mouth and blind among the churning froth I feel for my heart and the alternate. I get my breath back, and in the confusion end somewhere near the surface and the monolithic stone. 

Yet, what is seemingly the surface lies beneath the stone. The sand now burns so bright that the seagrass simply wisps like stands of honey sticking to its surface. And as the land has risen circumferentially, it has become clear that the grassy bed wreathes the stone. The stone now, has also changed beneath the harsh light. The rough and gritty texture is one of smooth keratin. It pinches and clicks with an all encompassing sound beneath the water. As if now in the abyss I can see the reversal: like an illusion, there is a faint eyespot where light might still be filtering through deep above me. I kick hard upwards and through the now fully formed tunnel away from the stone revealed to be beak. In which direction it leads I don’t know, but I move forward. Beside me, in what look like unnatural symmetries sit colossal suckers ribbing each totem-like highway that creases roundly with the next. I can’t help but look at each with their deep black pupil as if they’re watching me. This place somehow feels holily organized before me.

Time protracts. In each cupping I can see the pixel-like frenzy of life scurrying in their own burrows and niches. I keep moving. The light has become bright and somewhere in all of it I think I see an anchor. I move and in the scale of it all feel like I am still and that it is simply all abuzz around me. How beautifully harrowing to realize, but my legs kick and and my arms scream till I am at the tip. I can just narrowly make out the monolithic form, and then the squid descends into the deep. The sand bars are gone, the ocean floor is somewhere beneath the expansive matte black. I float hanging onto the anchor of the boat, that floatingly will ground me.