This is worth reading. :-)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 09:57:13 -0700 From: SF Gate Newsletters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MARK'S NOTES & ERRATA Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse... *********************************************** **Dolphins On The Brain, Part I** Out swimming amongst the cetaceans, gaining a little soul, avoiding cliche http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2002/05/15/notes051502.DTL&nl= fix So we're out sputtering along the coast of Hawaii in a funky hand-built 20-foot boat with China Mike the spirit-guru Zen-master whale-lovin' shaman boat captain and Nancy the ultra-sweet Dolphin Adventures guidewoman and it's about 87 degrees and clear and calm and everyone's all, you know, SPF 30'd and anticipative and dolphined up, as you might expect. And we're looking for a huge pod of wild spinner dolphins with which to snorkel and frolic and feel all connected and cool and magical, so as to live that whole soul-expanding swimming-with-dolphins cliche, which of course is only a cliche until you actually shut up your little ego and calm your causticity and get in the water, and then it becomes something else entirely. But first, the whales. Three of them, humpbacks, a huge, 40-ton escort male, a massive female, and a 3-ton baby. On our way to find the dolphins, just off the port side, maybe 300 yards. You remember from the gentle slightly goofy spirit-prayer he led everyone in just before departure that China Mike the shaman boat captain has a thing for whales, a very special connection, they're his totem animal, which when you're out there staring them down and it's 87 degrees and you're in Hawaii and everything is loaded with natural wonder and power and small profound slaps of transcendental meaning, well, that makes perfect sense. The whales are moving parallel with the boat. They breach, they show a flipper or two, they roll. Many ooh and ahhs are exclaimed. China Mike suggests we try to bring them over to us. We look at him, say what? He puts on some rather insteresting and special Hawaiian whale chant music on the boat's little stereo. This is what he does. We turn and look back at the whales. They are coming directly at us. No lie. Suddenly and just like that, all three of them, all 75 tons of living mammal, turn on a whale-size dime and are closing fast, like a small herd of elephants suddenly turning in their tracks and marching calmly toward your little VW sitting there in the open veldt. Oh my God. Oh my god. We all exclaim it, almost in unison. OhmygodOhmygodOhmygod. They're coming right at us and fifteen seconds later they're upon us, right there, directly below out tiny boat, three enormous whales in about a hundred feet of water, these impossibly majestic leviathans. This can't be happening. And then they stop. You can't believe it. We can't believe it. They've stopped right below the boat. You lean over to look, but the eye can't capture the scale of it; you have to sort of back up your vision, widen the lens, realize that enormous dark shape isn't the shadow of a cloud. Surreal. Strange. Stunning. We laugh in amazement. We shake our heads. Everyone is saying this is so incredible and no way and is this really happening and did that music really just draw the whales over here? Can you do that? Is that even legal? And then again, why the hell not? Our man Mike is a mellow mystic shaman, after all. Whales are his thing. Anything is possible. This is what you begin to realize. Snorkel masks are grabbed, positions are taken, we lean way over the side of the boat (you're not allowed to actually swim with humpbacks), stick our faces in, and look. And gasp. It is a comprehensive gasp: mind, body, soul, breath, ego. Everything starts, jumps, freezes. It is electric and shocking and like nothing you have ever seen in your life. It is epic and mysterious and otherworldly, like stepping into another dimension, like turning a corner on a normal street in a normal city and suddenly there's a hundred-foot bright red fire-god sipping a lemonade, smiling calmly. Humpback whales 50 feet beneath your face and it's this massive stillness, this stunning sense of grace and power like nothing your mind is used to. You actually have to swivel your head to see the entire creature. The escort and the female appear dark bluish black, roughly the size of a Greyhound bus on steroids, wide as a 747, barnacled yet smooth, staggeringly enormous but somehow feather light and made of nothing but wisdom and significance and a very large amount of body fat. Our eyes were as big as dinnerplates. Images were burned upon the deepest part of the anima, all the way down to where it really matters. The sun is hot and the water is cool and you're just a bunch of slightly sunburned bipeds in a boat sticking your face in the ocean to look at really huge animals. But of course, it's much more than that. A minute later, with maybe two effortless thrusts of their 1-ton flippers, gone. Into the black of the deep Pacific. Dear God. People actually kill these animals? By choice? Are we insane? This is what happened. The whales gave us a moment, let us peer, let us admire and awe and feel that connection all the way down. Of course it sounds smarmy and hackneyed. Too bad. They were aware of us. They knew what they were doing and they let us look and this was obvious and amazing and thrilling; they are not stupid randomly lumbering insentient beasts and hence this visit was a gift, an outreach. You know it. No pretense and no sensitive New Age-y wind-chime tree-hugger BS. It just was. These are the glimpses that mean something. These are the connections you should pay attention to. Because if you don't, it's just war and death and oil-grubbing politicians and sodomitic priests and bad wine and jaded angst and soul-draining fluorescent lighting and cubicles. And that's just no fun at all. http://cetacea.org/humpback.htm (Coming Friday: Part II -- In the water with the huge pod of spinner dolphins. Watch for it.) -------- end forwarded message --------- Marvin Long Austin, Texas "Never flay a live Episiarch." -- Galactic Proverbs 7563:34(j)
