Transparent Sea, and All Its Colors and Shapes.
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Imagine if the sea were totally transparent. So transparent that you could see through it to the bottom.
The water would be translucent for several meters below the surface to expose innumerable creatures of all colors and shapes. Some of them lurking dangerously, others with electric load ready to go off at the touch, some with grotesque teeth like a fence keeping everybody away.
The ocean floor, so very dark and mostly unexplored, is a limitless realm of unusual laws, with enormous underwater lakes and a suffocating sea under the sea, almost completely disconnected from the world above. And, even further down, a hot hell ready to penetrate the freezing water and come up as — rarely cathartic often destructive — lava. Remote and least understood, the sea is very much like the soul.
Just like the soul, the thalassic queendom has no gate. Approaching its depths is neither effortless nor safe. I hold my breath and fall into its origins, the sources of the stream. I am drifting with a pain-avoiding flow. Singing bubbles, flirtatious sunlight, celestial reflections, sparkling pebbles, birds and deer.
Everything is joyful and reassuring till… out of the corner of my eye I catch the phantom of a princess swirling down the river after she lost all hope and love in a barbarian invasion.
I arrive. Finally thrown into the shimmering and wavy water blankets of the beginning of time, I surrender and sink. At first, a gliding tactile illusion, a slightly briny taste on the tongue, the smell of the fish, an octopus greets me and I am enveloped inside the thin, cool fluidity. It’s early morning and a flock of emerald minnow hurry to school. Whirling without resistance, I feel without thinking.
It is always easier to let go. But perilous. You never know how deep you can go and what is there.
All light is now absorbed together with all colors but blue. A shark passes right in front me. Angry or curious? I try to stay completely motionless. At a distance, the siren-like voice of the whale penetrated the liquid molecules only to warn me. Who says whales are singing happily? To my ears, it’s a dirge.
What was it this time? The dull sound of an earthquake thunder? Moaning of beings existing or even non-existing? Scratching on the ocean floor from icebergs in excruciating pain? The overwhelming clamor of a distant typhoon?
Unable to see clearly, I am offered some consolation from the sheer body of a mother-to-be medusa up above. She allows the slightest of beams to pass through her body. Her string legs invite me to dance with her and share her motherhood joy. Resting on pelagic sediment, the urchin offers its Diogenes’ lantern to those seeking truth and honesty. And that was the last light I saw.
A final why arrowed my brain. Why dive into the gloom when I can go right up and play? Why dive risking never coming up again? Could I even like the lack of light and human touch? I am still just a few kicks away from the playful sequined surface, children’s laughter, boats promising happy trips, the luminous celestial embrace.
It is because I have decided that this is the stage of life to really meet myself, including my fearful, hiding self.
On the way to the core of all earthly matter, thuds and clanks of ghosts caged in submarine wrecks demand their resurrection as the metallic walls reflect and echo the wailing of their living mothers, piercing all layers of existence and beyond. Ashes of demise scattered to the immortal life of arias and verses fall like grey snow to further obscure the landscape.
After all, the aquatic substance is largely made of tears. I am certain now, other shipwrecks with loads of invaluable wealth are to deliver secrets untold as well as scattered body parts of others like me.
Is it my conscience weighing down on me or is this fluid quilt heavy on my body? I am now entering the last layer right before the magma. Is this the moment when I evaporate into oblivion? This is the uncharted, hostile, icy, mute and inescapably black aquatic underworld. My nostrils sealed to protect my lungs. I could only smell memories.
Is it my idea or is the oceanic consistency thicker here and the salt so dense? Is this blackness around me or inside me? Should I need to escape, such extreme cold and pressure make moving very slow and hard. Curiosity about the contents of nothingness lures me to unknown waters.
Keeping my eyes open is now of no use. Dreams, hallucinations and the green mist of the past could really survive here. Either I stay and risk to perish, or swim back up.
What was the purpose of diving in the first place? To explore? To become courageous? To find and accept my hidden self? To fulfill the purpose of my spiritual essence? To discover the nucleus of my human status? To confess? To forgive? To face the greatest feeling of all?
This is the moment and the place to wonder why I am largely made of dark material and what this material is. Sometimes when you know the components, you demystify and harness the total. But this is a thick tangle of unexplored childhood marks, unspoken feelings and the quest for a higher purpose. A little bit of hell and a little bit of paradise. A compass to infinity.
Are we born with it inside? Is it prehistoric? Why is it still in us? Does it look so impenetrable because we are too afraid to examine it? Afraid that it is so strong that it will devour us? Is this it us or a strange, independent entity? Are we afraid that if it comes to light, we will be ashamed of who we really are and what we have bred in us? Afraid that it has created us instead of the opposite?
Afraid that if it dissolves, we will have no purpose to exist? Afraid that we are it but pretend otherwise by wearing a civilized and benevolent social armor?
On the abysmal screen, where all hues of the visible light spectrum are swallowed, elusive shapes of my precious ones appear. Since navigating is impossible, I can only use my imagination and instinct. Fear. This is how I know I am now in the hadal zone of the ocean, the kingdom of Hades where no natural law applies and, despite the lack of oxygen and light, creatures fed by carcasses and waste are teeming.
Now this is deep! The vast Profound. The least known. The hidden and occult. Love cannot live here because love is transparent and lucid. It needs oxygen to live and healthy beings to nurture and cherish it. This here though is the realm of fear!
What is fear? Just a slimy void I try to shake off of my fingertips? The heat of life disappearing from all that comprises me? The evaporating brain atoms? The disappearance of love? All agonies summoned up in one? The fear of death? Is this the ultimate fear? The suicide of illumination, possibilities, embraces and heartbeat into a stellar black hole?
The transformation of human energy scattered into the ocean, in the belly of the earth, in space, in the universe and beyond…
Right at that moment, I realized this would be the unique chance to confront this paralyzing entity. It would either be I to dissolve it with a powerful glance or it would be the one to consume me. A treacherous, warm and inviting current leads the way. There, I see the mouth of its cave. A yellowish cloudy effluvium comes out. Sulphur?
An eerie, filmy, oscillating guard tries to allure those who hesitate with a devious half-open trunk full of lavish temptations. Right behind it, stalagmites of rock surround this opening and it is narrow enough to assure that no one would escape after going inside. Ominous chills follow a long, seismic roar. Inside the cave, the cliché of a huge black slimy critter with anthropomorphous eyes… this is not Cerberus.
This is the monster.
Will it come out for me? Is it my time? What stands between me and Leviathan? Billions of years of the monster’s reign? Innumerable carcasses and skeletons? Myriads of dismembered bodies and shredded flesh? Skulls carved with emptiness and bloody eyeballs floating around? Leftovers of both saints and devils? The prayers of my beloved dead, the love of my dearest living?
What will stop it from ripping my head off so I can still watch my body die a tormented death? Frozen, I decide to feel I am surrounded by a blurry spinning current of hope. It works. I start kicking hard and as fast as the depth allows. The sediment becomes suspended and I escape until it is redeposited.
As I kicked my way up, a garden of crimson corals reminded me of the courageous life. A field of anemones waved at me a wave of hope. Underwater sculptures of iridescent rocks mark the way back, if I dare again. I think the monster has no chance of surviving if brought out of its lair and under the sunlight. Its skin and gills would be scorched in a glint.
When my soul unites with the Eternal Energy, the monster inside me will die together with the flesh. No matter how long it would it take me to recover from divers’ bends, I have come up, somewhat stronger and with a few treasures of wisdom in my still shaking heart…
***
Eleni Stamouli was born in Athens, Greece, where she lives with her family. She works as an in-house counsel, but a secret flame for writing has been burning in her heart since childhood. She has participated in small short stories contests in Greece. Writing her soul out is her thing, but she didn’t know if anybody would be interested in reading.
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