Blue

I spent a brief time skipping rocks on the Mississippi about two years ago. I’m still not sure if I am a completely horrible rock skipper, or if the overbearing muddy brown waters weigh my flat stone down to sink it to the bottom after only one or two measly jumps. The history of the good ole Mississippi is intriguing and sets an ambiance that only Tom and Huck could truly explain. I couldn’t help but to think that, water is blue. Not brown, and the transparently blue tides of the Caribbean, or a glacier lake, the fade of blues in a large wave, and the tints of green between the rapids of a river all set a calming yet powerful tone and are the mothers and fathers of what the Mississippi is. The two largest things this earth has are the water and the sky, and we are on this ever changing vessel called land. I’ve recently found that I perhaps have felt the most alive while swimming naked in the ocean. I typically would prefer a lake or pool of freshwater, soothing. But when you enter into the salty ocean, as it slowly moves all around you, like lying in the bath, letting it rise millimeter by millimeter around your body, feeling every water molecule cling and surround your skin, you can’t help but to feel alive. The blue becomes a fountain of youth, when you’re naked. Even just a small European or Brazilian bathing suit constricts the true freedoms that are being handed to you by this creation. Then when you dive under the surface, you are free. The water moves over you like the hands of the most skilled masseuse, holds you like an incredible lover, and lets you free like pollen billowing off a field of a thousand wild flowers. You never want the feeling to end, but you need to breathe! Bursting out of the surface to that first breath gives you an idea of the preciousness of life. Regardless to how or why we achieved our consciousness, it is inevitably a gift, and this luscious blue water had been like a yearly Christmas present from a distant relative reminding you that you are loved. As air fills your lungs, your eyes begin to open. And there above you is the blue sky, soaring for an unexplainable distance until it begins again. The sky is our ceiling, protecting us, and creates the possibility for life, its calm and deep, ever changing with the hours of the day, rotations of the sun and moon. It harvests our fresh water and releases it to once again create. They hold blue to a true standard. A mind stunned by the complete power of nature enters euphoria, leaving other senses immobile. In this case you may then be pounded back into the sea by the same power of nature. As you take your second breath, staring into the cloudless blue sky, the force of a stampede of stallions crashes over the top of this temporary body, hurtling you deep under the surface. The water scoops and sweeps you in its own circle of life revolving and shaking with a power that no man, however strong, could withstand. You’re lungs are out of air, under water, naked, just the same as the blissful swim moments ago. Now fearful of death, scared and not in control, airless, the wave releases you. Control of your body and strength over the tide rebuilds confidence and your mind stops to panic and controls your body responsibly again. Through the wavy glare of the water beneath the surface, the blue sky above seems to be fiendishly holding this air, like a drug dealer waiting for an estranged customer to relapse. You fill your lungs again, and quickly swim to the shallows; into the protection land gives us. Looking out into the blue, smiling, there is nothing to do but thank the water. It is like God, giving the bliss and pleasure of living, but more powerful, full of more energy than a million atomic bombs. As you just now, I remember standing in the wash on the shore about up to my shins, and felt the push and pull of the water, constant.  That push and pull will not stop, never sleep, and never end until the end of Earth. The blue sky and the blue sea will work together, forever showing us how precious life is, the chances we have to be free, and the limitations our mortality sets. The answers are clear, well, the answers are actually blue, and blue has been my favorite color ever since.