A Note From Paradise! (part 4 of 7): The Exquisite Coral!

…So after ‘breakfast,’ it’s often about noon, which is the heat of the day. Going to the beach would be a very hot and potentially burning option…so I usually opt to head back to swing in the shade of my hammock and read. I’m reading my fabulous Aunt Mary’s book, The Gift of Our Compulsions. She teaches the most brilliant approach to living peacefully within our bodies and minds that I have ever come across… (but I’m trying to stay on task, so more about that later).

As I sway in my hammock, I periodically close my eyes and visualize letting go of the stress I have been carrying around in my body for who knows how many years….the tightness in my neck and shoulders, the knot in my shoulder blades that burns now and then, the ache in my low back, the tension in my belly… Now some of you may be thinking, ‘Geez Jody, its not like you’ve been a soldier at war.’ Yes, you are correct. I have not been living my life on a battlefield. But I’m not interested in living my life comparing myself to others. Each person’s experience of life is made up of an exquisitely unique string of events that shape one’s perspective of absolutely everything one encounters. Also, one’s insides rarely match that which shows on the outside, so we rarely know the truth of another’s experience in reality anyway. And lastly, one’s experience of ‘easy’ might be another’s experience of ‘hard,’ and vice versa…. So what good is comparing anything to anyone, anyway? (Hmm, did that sound defensive? Perhaps it was a bit of my own self-doubt coming out…or that voice so common in our society that says, ‘You don’t deserve that, given the many people less fortunate then you in the world.’…Yah, that makes sense. So lets just all make sure we don’t enjoy life too much.)

Interesting…the word ‘digression’ just came to mind. That’s seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? I wonder where that came from? Hmm… Anyway, as I was saying. I spend the early afternoon swaying in my hammock, reading, watching, napping… By about 2 pm, my body is ready to move. I stroll down the stairs until my feet land in the sand, spit into my snorkel mask and rinse it in the sea, (a fabulous tip from my brilliant Grandfather Irving to keep my mask from fogging up, taught to me during our many precious years vacationing together in Hawaii throughout my childhood), and then jump in and off I go, to explore the beauty of life in the sea!

The coral is stunning! So many different shapes and sizes… The huge round balls covered entirely with little squiggly, colorful lines creating the appearance of a gigantic brain; the bright green, circular ‘platters,’ stretching 6 feet in diameter with every inch of their surface covered by ‘fingers’ that stick straight up; the purple ‘cauliflower’ heads that range from tiny to gargantuan; the various shapes that look like a furry terry cloth bathrobe that has been thrown into a pile on the floor; the piles of ‘deer antlers’ with their sharp projections pointing in every which way; the humble ‘plants’ with broad, flat ‘leaves’ that curve around a single united core; the ‘flower bouquets’ with their intricately designed ‘flowers.’… And the vista of it all together!

When I first leave the beach, I see a flat expanse of various shapes and colors. But then as I continue to swim out, I come to a point where I suddenly feel like I’ve just peeked over the edge of a ten-story building and down below is an entire city of life! Big, multicolored boulders standing tall like proud castles; stunning coral that fans out from a vertical edge like a perplexing piece of modern art; barren parts of white sand acting like the city’s central park; bright green ‘branches’ that are stacked on top of each other and branch out, resembling a magnificent bonsai tree; the green splatter that looks like it was created by being shot out of a paint gun… The amazing thing about coral is that to the untrained eye, it just looks like colored rocks. Not true!! Coral is ALIVE! When you look closely at one of these magnificent pieces of life, you realize that its actually covered in thousands of tiny spores, pulsating with life. (It is not to be touched however, because the transfer of bacteria from human touch can actually kill it.)…But that’s just the coral!

Other various life forms abound!…Vibrantly colored ‘clams’ somehow buried deep into the coral so that the only part that comes into view is their fluorescent colored ‘lips’ opening and closing upon the surface of the coral; the one to two foot long, jumbo sized ‘hot dogs’ in their various colors and textures that basically look exactly like huge terds, but are fondly known as sea cucumbers; edges of ‘buildings’ decorated with these tiny bright red, bright blue, and bright green fuzzy balls, seemingly with 2 little black ‘eyes’ (reminiscent of those fuzzy ended pencils with eye balls amongst their frizz) that suddenly somehow retract and disappear into the rock when I come close; the ‘floating spider webs’ that just hang around as if Spiderman had just cast his net out creating them (I’m told its plankton); individual pieces of deep purple colored ‘spaghetti,’ all sticking straight up from the base of a rock floating back and forth in unison like Bob Marley’s dreadlocks, swaying to the beat of their favorite song, “What a Glorious Day in the Sea;” …but that’s not even the half of it! Let me tell you about all the tropical fish!

…But as you all well know by now, I am very empathetic to those of you with short attention spans and I think this entry is getting a bit long. So I will delight you with the rest of this amazing experience, in my next entry…Until then!