2000-07-24

One time, when I was terribly tiny and the upper part of my bathing suit was merely a gender marker rather than a useful piece of clothing, my father and uncle took me boogie boarding. I must have been about 4, when people wondered why my mother cut my hair so short although the reality was that was all the hair my body could grow in 4 years. My baby sister actually lived up to her adjective as she was then a baby who didn't need a gender marking bathing suit on the beach, just a diaper and a shirt that said "give me what I want" or something since she was throwing fits in the sun.

My father and uncle took little me, who was a natural swimmer since I never remembered actually learning to swim until my parents sent me to swimming lessons at 8 to learn different strokes, out into deep ocean above their heads. They would let me go on a wave, holding tight to the sides of the yellow topped, white bellied board and cruising towards the shore. My mother did not like this, her baby being let loose in the forceful Atlantic Ocean that sunk the Titanic. But my father and her baby brother, his adjective did not match his grown self that called me Moonbaby, did it anyhow and I enjoyed it.

And it wasn't for the ride. It was for the end of the ride where the waves broke into the land and I was tossed upside down, driven with the force under the water line. I felt whole at these moments, I felt amazing, I came back and forth, ignoring my mother's objection for this quick moment before I would resurface, sand in my suit and hair plastered all over my head.

I was living under the water for about 10 seconds, tossed by the water and land meeting, confronting who I was as an above water creature getting to remember the world below the water I have determined I belong to.

So, my house burned about 2 months ago, that's a different tale, but I bought Disney's Princess cups for my sisters and not exactly sister Marie. I carefully selected a princess to represent each of us: Marie-Cinderella cause she sewed and was friends with mice, Jenn-Belle because it means beautiful and she sees great beauty in things that aren't beautiful like the boys in Hoboken, Kasey-Snow White because she pretends to be oblivious to her princess status and me? It took me a while; I did not want to ego trip. I kind of liked Ariel from the lil Mermaid. Angel said I should because, like her I was always asking why. So I was Ariel. I was Ariel when I was 4, I have always been part underwater creature.

I am not of your world, above the water line creatures. I am of the last, unknown frontier. Those of your race that turn to the sky, to the stock market, underdeveloped yet full of potential third world markets, are completely lost because the answers are not there, they are under the waterline.

You obsess over variation of 4 themes: emotional interaction, physical interaction, cranial development/learning and physical necessity. You try to dissect these ideas but only vary them. You claim to be original but you variate to absurdity. Your life is not complex, it is variations on the simple; it is simplex.

My underwater race gave that up long ago, we seek not variation but development and full realization. Your variation is something we have chosen to give up to commit ourselves to a simpler world of complexity.

When I was younger and of a more feeble cranial state, I believed my questions annoyed you because you could not understand. I thought that I would never be able to communicate with you. But now that I have left my larval stage, I realize that you can understand the idea of understanding scares you like sharks and urchins.

I do not question you to make you feel bad about your constant variation, I question you to allow me to share my underwater world of understanding, to bring my realization at 4 that I was not of this world to this world. Please do not be discouraged, I want you to see the simple understanding we can have.