Plastic Tourism

Imagining a different kind of ocean was difficult.  Did I remember the fine details of our trips to the sea as a small girl on the coast of Texas, somewhere in the recesses of my mind?  Were they any different than this trip to the Bali Sea as a woman now?

Would the driver of our boat have offered a plastic wrapped, hot pink, cream filled pastry as fish food just 25 years ago?

Then another memory hits me. Just three years prior, the southern coast of the United States was darkened, oiled liberally by the hands of BP, just down wind from that place of my child hood memory.

The ragged ‘dolphin boat’ was captained by a tiny Indonesian man with a thin mustache.  He was the father of two kids and an aging dolphin boat.  He split his time between fishing and taking tourists like us, out to sea.

In the barely rising sun, the ocean and sky collaborated to fill the environment with a feathery blue hue that matched Dawa’a hoodie.  It all appeared tranquil in the haze of dawn.  The soft damp skin of Dawa’s hand felt cool as I passed my belongings to her and hoisted myself in to the boat.

Eddie was a good captain, like a slightly overgrown child, a far East Peter Pan.  He was the rebel in the bunch.  He spoke a mean English, giving him an air of confidence.  As we gained on the other dolphin boats cruising across the water, on the hunt, with cameras in hand, he held the engine’s lever with assuredness.  We were one of the few boats that didn’t look like a pack of orange puffed sardines, fat from life jackets.  We were just three without all the gear.  But that was about the only thing that set us apart. 

The light of the still present star, Sun, grew and grew.  As it lifted the last peelings of darkness, truth revealed a bit unexpectedly, the ugliness of human ignorance:

A child’s slipper, worn from the currents;

A water bottle, "Aqua, product of Nestle";

Clear plastic sweets wrapper;

Large plastic bag;

An emptied individual cereal bag with a monkey on the front and pink script;

A styrophoam chunk, hosting space for a large caste away land spider;

A knot of fishing net pieces attached to drift wood…

Litter is truthful. 

The landfill, in the shadows, is our big secret bursting with reality and litter is the clue to our great hidden mounds.  The landfills store our trash as cadavers are stored in morgues.  Trash scattered about the idealized landscapes that we hunger to be a part of, is for boding, as one might find dead bodies hanging around to rot where they had first left the living.  

Forgotten remnants of our over consumption wafted across the ocean’s deep blue face.  The ocean seemed willing to bare witness to our carelessness, like a plea to those paying attention.

The boat of Chinese stood, armed with telephoto lenses.  The Indonesians chatted with their boat drivers and fumbled with their new fangled notebook knock offs to set up for the right snap.  Dawa handed me the Iphone for a back up, easy-to-post picture option and she anxiously established her photographer stance.  Everyone was hungry in the early morning light to catch sight of a creature so unreal in our minds.  We stood together in our want.

The engines hummed.  There must have been 50-60 boats coming from all angles off the coast.  The villages lined up on the shore were now in the distance.  Fingers pointed and boats took off towards the suspect area of real live dolphins.

And as if by magic, they came.

The gentle, sublime looking creatures, wove in and out of the deep blue-gray liquid.  The closer the boats came, the quicker the dolphins disappeared.  The more we wanted, the more they slipped away, allusive under their great dark blanket.  They continued to taunt us.  What was it we wanted?  The Chinese, the Australians, the Indonesians, the Indians, the humans, all in want.  

For myself it must have been a craving for a sense of purity; a chance to be touched by their connection to the old world, the way things use to be.

 I closed my eyes as the salt sprayed against my earthy cheeks.  I prayed first, behind my big prayer, for the power to communicate with the dolphins.  I asked for them to hear me first.  I implored them.  My salty liquid fell lightly and mixed with the sea’s salt.

The engines hummed and lulled, hummed and lulled.

“Please dolphins, we don’t want to hurt you, we just want to understand.  We want to know about you, feel you.  We just want a touch of your simplicity.”  I prayed like a child.  

I kept on praying for their forgiveness, for any fear that they might feel.  I imagined that I was able to calm them like any true mother.  I wanted and wished for them to know that they were safe.  That we, all of these humans packed in to these boats roaring after them, trying desperately to catch a glimpse, just wanted to understand why we loved them so much or loved a seemingly intangible quality that filled them. 

Eddie was a good captain.  He let us stay out after most all of the boats had hummed back to shore.  He turned off the engine so we could sit and wait for them in silence.  He gave us the sacred space to commune with the dolphins. 

“There they are,” spied Dawa in a hurried whisper.

They headed straight towards our boat, sewing themselves like thread through cloth, with ease and grace.  In the silence we could hear their blowholes release, we heard them breath, like us they breathe.  We heard them dip.  We witnessed their delicately placed features, planned so well by nature to soften even the hardest of hearts.

“Look Nicki,” said Dawa.  She had turned in to a child, so fresh with delight.  I turned in to a soft piece of emotion.  They touched us and then slipped back underneath their blanket.

Had they heard my prayers?  Or do they just know?  

Eddie pulled hard and the engine came to a murmur.  “Okay, time for snorkeling.” 

I didn’t want to leave them. The stain of their sweet eyes and smooth flesh was permanent.  I wanted to lose all my fear of the ocean in that moment, slip in to the water and be carried away on their backs.  

We picked up speed and headed back towards the shore.  The truth was, I did fear something.  Was it the darkness below the boat or the green slime on the boats side?  Where did the fear come from?

The litter had not seized.  Pink plastics and blue plastics, a rainbow of biscuit bags, a dead cat bloated with its collar and bell still on, stiff and floating.  It was ominous.  I was scared to get in to the water and look below.  What would I find?  Was I afraid of the ocean's natural inhabitants or scared to see all that we human beings have disposed of in our compulsion for convenience?

We moored in a clear area, where the coral become more evident.  I fumbled with the fins and grabbed for a snorkel and mask.  Mildew filled the edges of one of them.  I was up to my ears in ewww, on edge after the bloated cat.  I grabbed for another one and tugged it over my head, rearranging strands of my hair.  We scooted to the side of the boat and after we both resisted, we plunged.

Adjusting my face gear, I held my core.  But all I felt was the emotion of taint, like everything I touched, everything I loved and admired had been smothered and I was a part of this disease of our time.

We went under. 

The first thing I noticed was a bright azure starfish, absolutely gripping;

a school of fish;

a bag;

some coral;

another bag…

I was afraid of getting too close to the plastic, the remnants of our abuse.

I noticed faint jellyfish right before me.  I remember being enamored by jellyfish as a child and doing a project on them, working so hard to find pictures and facts and then ultimately creating a scroll in a box, painted the color of the sea to display my findings. 

I moved a safe distance but knew without knowing, I had nothing to fear.

And then I saw the translucent bags, two of them a drift before us, with particles of sand in them.  I feared again.  I feared the deathless sinister waifs that masqueraded as jellyfish.  I dreaded nearing these manmade castaways, mutated from earth's matter in to earth’s foe.

Why did I fear the matter?

It is not the stick that beats us, or even the person that beats us that causes the pain, but the anger behind the beating that is the culprit to our pain (an old Buddhist lesson).

It is not the bag littering the sea, but the desire that produced the contents that were once held in that bag.

The bag, in that sense, as much a victim as nature, created to serve our unquenchable thirst.

I squint again, to see back in to another time, running along the gray sand of youth.  How far had we gone back then?  What will a trip to the ocean look like as I enter old age?  Will we have clogged the surface and the depths of the blue so much so that we no longer recognize her as our oceans?

Dawa pulls out her camera to scroll back through the images.  She gets to a shot, the back of a dolphin.  “What is that?”  She zooms in.  “Is that a plastic bag caught on its fin?”

My senses feel lost in fear for the Great Mother’s future.

In the face of adversity, are we inspired to truly change the course of our swim?  

Can we find satisfaction in a world without plastic, without oil, without petroleum?  Look in to the eyes of our near relatives, the dolphins, the birds, your kitty cat and ask yourself, are they satisfied?