Arterial

            Everyone should, at some point in life, be confronted with the sight of his own arterial blood.  I’m not advocating a life threatening experience or even a grievous injury, but viewing one’s oxygen bright life force leaving the body in eager, arcing spurts is a defining moment, a predicament the reaction to and resolution of which illuminates much about the bleeder, not to mention the way the vivid, ruby memory lingers ever after as a cautionary reminder.

            The only hole an artery should have is the one that runs down the middle, lengthwise, making it, by definition, an artery.  Forget about this secondary hole leading somewhere else, specifically out of the body in a direction perpendicular to the normal flow, thank you very much.  At least that was what I was thinking as I watched a thin, velvety red stream pulsing eighteen inches into the air from my foot with the heartbeat regularity of a Bellagio fountain show every hour on the hour twice an hour on Sundays.

            I don’t mean to play up the trauma drama, as we’re talking about the faintest of nicks, the mildest of pinprick holes in the top of my foot, close to the surface of the skin and right on the big artery there in just the right place to make things look intensely graphic and messy without actually being much of a big deal.  Having seen the results of this superficial wound, I am now intensely aware of the seriousness of major damage to the circulatory system, because if my little mistake can make that much mess that quickly, I don’t want to be around when something big lets go. 

            Bottom line, like most little bumps in the road that we walk away from without serious repercussions beyond a small scar, be it emotional, mental, physical, said bumps teach us a lesson, make us stronger, wiser, more prepared in the future to face similar situations.  At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I pulled my foot from under a 300 pound aluminum dive deck ladder that I had just set on top of it and applied firm, direct pressure to the pulsing wound, willing myself not to pass out at the sight of my own arterial blood.  

Even Handed

            I carry a light when I dive. More than one, actually; it’s dark inside wrecks.  The primary light, though, is a big honking eight C cell (rechargeable, naturally) thing with a pistol grip.  When it isn’t clipped off on my harness, it is in my hand.  My right hand.  Always my right hand.  No matter how hard I try, how many times I switch it to my left for variety’s sake, the moment I stop actively willing it stay in my left hand, it jumps, unbidden, to my right. 

            Some activities require the dominant hand: writing, three point shots, cutting a steak are good examples.  Try any of these with your off hand and you will make such a hash of things they’re not worth doing.  Other activities you can practice with your left hand and become proficient---frisbee, shooting guns, dicing food, pleasuring yourself, etc.  But the vast majority of us don’t practice such things with our off hand.  It’s easier to do it with the dominant hand, so we do. 

            That’s how things happen with my light.  It stays clipped on my right side, and when I want it I reach for it with my right hand, where it stays until I clip it off again.  Sometimes I switch over and actually concentrate on keeping it in the left.  Then I start thinking about something else, or move to manipulate or steady myself on something, or illuminate something in a crack or crevice.  The next time I think about it or start paying attention again, there it is in my right hand.  It’s not like the light is brighter or more effective when held in the right.  What’s the deal?

            So, a little social experiment for you.  Something you use every day, as important to you as my light is to me.  How about your PDA/cell phone?  Try using that thing exclusively with your off hand all day tomorrow, and see how long it takes for your dominant hand to take over.  Strange, huh?

Moving

Imagine for a moment that the next time you pack up your household belongings to change residence, something drastic happens to the moving van or vehicle in which you are transporting them.  That this hypothetical exercise does not become too macabre, we will assume that ‘drastic’ doesn’t mean that your shipping transport was strafed, fired, torpedoed, and sunk with you in it, just that the vehicle disappeared but your belongings survived undisturbed for years in their packed state. 

 

            Now imagine that someone from a different culture, era, and language background happens upon the lost vehicle sixty-five years later and rummages around in your box of belongings, pulling your things out of their packing for curiosity and novelty’s sake.   How they would marvel at them, attaching weighty significance to the soup tureen your aunt gave you as a wedding gift, the hors d’oeuvre platter you never liked but your husband made you keep, and the set of cheap drinking glasses you picked up at your neighbor’s yard sale.  Think of the fascination the rummager would feel when examining not only the china, but the packing material.  The editorial section and Dear Abbey column from yesterday’s newspaper that you used to protect your glassware would seem an important historical find.  The rummager and would-be archaeologist might even consider the whole situation exciting enough to take some pictures and post them to his friends.

Bugle Boy

Little boy blew.  And who wouldn't, having just unearthed this gem from the silt in the forecastle of a wreck?

Stature

A snap of me exiting a hotel room in Indonesia. Frodo, Pippin, and Sam Gamgee will be over for tea presently.

Tempted?

I took this photo on the Lombok coast, north of a town called Sengigi.  Call me if you are tempted...

Cucumber Love

            Sea cucumbers are strange enough when they sit on the ocean floor, doing normal sea cucumber things.  The sea cucumber family is a diverse one, with wide variation in color, pattern, texture, size, degree of firmness, and what I think of as slime factor, a personal numerical rating system that frequently proves useful when dealing with underwater creatures.  Some sea cucumber traits are universal, though: long, sluggish, poop-shaped bodies slowly undulate along the sand, slurping up algae covered detritus and reforming the detritus into long strands of pearl necklace-like poo that winds along the bottom.  Weird. 

            There is a species of sea cucumber here that is one I have not seen elsewhere.  This guy has a mottled cream and brown body with large dark leopard spots.  He also has pointy white spikes that stick up at regular intervals.  They look dangerous, but are actually just as soft as the rest of his body.  A member of the cucumber genus commonly called the lion’s paw, he sports a series of short, dark, feelers that protrude slightly from the underside of his ‘head’ when he locomotes and feeds.  Looks like a whole row of little feather dusters waving around underneath the front part of his body.  Big guy, maybe two feet long, fully extended.  He’s a common sight on the wrecks.

            Here’s the decidedly uncommon part.  I was ending a dive today on a wreck that is settled on its side, just cruising along the high side of the hull on my way back to the Odyssey.  Next thing I know I’m the Muad Dib surrounded by spice worms, except they are only two feet long, and I’ve never even been to Arakis.  (Frank Herbert is rolling over in his grave right now, and not just because of how thoroughly disappointing all the sequels to Dune were.)  But seriously, that’s what it looked like.  Materializing in front of me in the murky water are seven or eight of these sea cucumbers, all but the last six inches of their cylindrical bodies held erect, vertical from the wreck, swaying slowly to some unheard echinoderm tune.  It looks like they all just decided to skip several rungs on the evolutionary chain and walk upright.  Or at least dance around a bit. 

            When I carefully moved amongst them, I noticed that they were all giving off a milky white fluid from a pore on the backs of their heads, and it was then that I realized with a combination of horror, amusement, and maybe just a little bit of titillation (hey, I live on a boat in the middle of nowhere), that I had stumbled into the middle of a full blown group groping gamete gooing echinoderm orgy.  I try not to think about the embryonic larval spawn fry hatchling krill spore supersaturated sexually active stew in which I work, yet here I was in the middle of it all, front row seat to the love fiesta taking place amongst these striving, earnest creatures.  Even as I watched, two more cucumbers quite literally reared their ugly heads and joined the party, broadcast spawning for all they were worth.  How much more simple would life be for humans if the entire act of courtship, relationship, and mating consisted of walking into a bar, spewing gametes all over the place, and leaving?  How much more complex?  Something to ponder as I bumped air into my buoyancy compensator and slowly ascended away from the undulating cucumbers and their fertile love cloud.  They were still going strong when I lost sight of them, and good for them, I say.