finally

Jake has had the blog market cornered for awhile now. we had the half way point of our trip a couple of days ago so i figured it's time. i finished the scuba course and am officially addicted, just like the crazy manic island man who taught me how to do it said i would. i was scared to take the class at first, talked to zanna, brielle and angela about it and they agreed that it was crazy, who would want to do that? it's like torture they said. i remembered the time when jake made me go diving in Fiji about 3 times as deep as i would be able to go after i took the beginner's course and i had to agree with them. but i'm trying a new thing in my life where i don't want to be afraid anymore. so i spent some time thinking about it, separating out the fear from the rest and decided that seeing a whole other part of the world that you can't otherwise see couldn't be bad. and the second me was right, it is thrilling, even without the nitrogen narcosis. just the coral alone blows your mind. my favorite thing is how all of the rules are different under water, all the things you thought were constants are no longer. like..people breathing under water, first of all. Rule number 1> fish don't fly> then there are the flying fish that don't just jump out of the water they are like birds that soar forever above the water. fish that fly. rule number 2> you are whatever sex you are born as. not true anymore. parrot fish are all born female and then the biggest one becomes a male and fiercely protects it's position so that other females don't become males. rule number 3> girls have the babies. while male seahorses are the ones who carry the babies, and everytime they give birth the female goes and impregnates them again. i love it cause it just goes to show that there are no set rules, everything is a variable that evolution can play with. turns the world upside down.
i don't think that the scuba place was ready for me, i think that they are used to hippie travellers who go out drinking all night before class and don't understand anything. i threw my long neglected swarthmore self into the course, it was my life at stake after all, and memorized every detail of the book. the instructor promises everyone that if they score a perfect score on the final exam he will by them ice cream. so i got to eat carrot cake and flaming ice cream while everyone cheered at the bar the night after the exam. the guy also misheard me and thought that i said i was going to medical school, so he would ask me all the time about the physiology of diving and stuff and after he had told everyone else that i was a doctor i couldn't reveal that i was just a silly youth worker with no job, so i had to pretend like i knew what apnia was and stuff. stressful.

my instructor, the pirate, invited jake and i over for dinner the last night on the island and in his craziness really made me think about some things. first of all he had fascinated me from when i first met him, he's like an island version of my brother Noah. he has way too much energy, can't sit still, and can sell anything to anyone. he has so much respect for things that make money, and you can tell he's so proud of himself when he can get someone to do something. he is also a self7proclaimed pirate which means that he drinks too much and smokes too much weed and can't be tamed despite the constant labors of his wife? girlfriend?. so, it always amazes me to see how different personalities manifest in different situations, if Alfred were born into my family i think he would be making tons of money banking in new york, but as an islander he's a pirate. it follows that he has a heavy dose of respect for the US of A. and we had a long drunken, on his part, conversation about the US and about how Americans feel about their country. He was very upset because he felt like Americans had the liberty to criticize our government, which he envies and thinks we should definitely keep doing, but that now that's all we do. "I have never met people who think so poorly of their country as Americans do" He said about 50 times. He definitely meets a certain type of American, but I still think he's right. and it made me think of MLK, of course, and how, despite everything that he was fighting against, never lost faith in America. He recognized the potential and had a vision for what it could be. Alfred made me realize that I don't have a vision anymore for what America could be, so of course all I do is criticize, and it's directionless because i don't even have something that I'm pushing towards really. So, that's what i'm going to be thinking about for a little while.