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Community Chat: The Fragile Edge
Bonaire Talk: Community Chat: Archives: Archives 2008: Archives - 2008-09-01 to 2008-09-30: The Fragile Edge
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Leo Irakliotis (BonaireTalker - Post #52) on Saturday, September 6, 2008 - 10:00 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

I just finished reading a book that is certain to cure (or aggravate) your PBD syndrome. The book's title is "Fragile Edge; Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific" and its author is Julia Whitty. As the title suggests, the book is about diving in the South Pacific, not in Bonaire. Whitty's writing, however, is inspired and inspiring. It captures the diver's awe.

Here's a brief excerpt from the book which is reproduced under the fair use clause:

Such is the paradox of the reef: a world that feels purely and extravagantly sensual yet exists mostly outside our own sensory realm. We smell nothing underwater (although the sea is filled with scents), taste only the metallic twang of compressed air, see poorly, and reduced to nondirectional hearing; in effect we are disabled. Nor can we talk. Without language, without the correct words, human divers revert to a preverbal state of mind. So the dive you just made tends to be felt rather than accurately remembered, and the little plastic slate you've dutifully carried underwater for notetaking reveals only doodles or strange hieroglyphs -- made more difficult to decipher since the pencil marks, supposedly erasable by scrubbing with beach sand, never really do come clean, leaving you to contend with the ghostly outlines of all your previous, equally enigmatic dives.

This is the struggle, or at least my struggle, working underwater: how to comprehend and then translate the otherworldly marvels under the surface into the alien world topside.


I loved reading this book and I hope that you'll find it equally delightful.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By *Linda* (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #2699) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 - 8:13 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Thanks Leo. I'll keep an eye out for it on my next run to the bookstore.

 


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