Vertigo of my Soul
a tale of tres vivos
by
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Jack and I are diving. We’re swimming together, matching our motion to the ocean. Kicking when the surge is going our way, floating above an amazingly beautiful reef when the water goes the other way. My gaze is fixated on the purples, pink, oranges, and a few smaller bright red crown-like corals that encrust the underwater canyon walls. It’s like flowers lining a Monet Painting. Bright fish surround us decked out in every color -- translucent yellow, fluorescent royal blue polka dots, oranges and yellows so vivid, so vibrant there no flower garden compares. Huge waves crash only a few feet over our heads onto sharp pointy rocks that erupt through the water surface. It’s like an underwater peaky Swiss Alps scene, with only the uppermost tips breaking the surface. When you’re on the boat it looks like the peak of the Matterhorn.
We swim to the closet. Our name for a little coral dugout in the canyon wall where lobster love to hang out safely out of reach watching what swims by. Turtles use it to bunk up for the night too. Every so often, sharks buzz by. Usually it’s just a nurse shark. Nurse sharks appear scary, but really are in the ray family. They doesn’t even have pointy teeth. Theirs are more like saws designed to cut through lobster and crab shells. They pretty much leave people alone, except if you pull their tail. But then if you pull my pigtails, you’re prolly gonna get a reaction too.
Just like when the school bully walks into the room, when those sharks pop in looking for tonight’s dinner, everything ducks and tucks backwards into openings in the coral or under rocks. Only an unlucky few get caught not paying attention. The rest pop back out about 5 minutes after the sharks leave the scene. Somehow they know. They must pick up the energy, or the movement.
The same way, lobster also seem to know when we’ve got our snares along. They disappear. The little guys must pick up on our energy. Usually they peer out at us from under their colorful ledges watching us looking at them. Until we get a little too close. Then they bolt. Pfft. They are gone. They tuck their tails under themselves and snap backwards closing like a clamshell. Except these guys jet backwards and bounce 20, 40 even 80 feet in a single bound...
I wake up in the hospital. Not one but 2 beautiful amazing men watching over me. Both turn their backs on me to show how upset they are for my sitting on the fence for so long.
ME: You both are amazing. Please don’t be mad at me. What the hell happened? Last thing I remember I swam out to join Splash and my lil turtle buddy was bumping my butt to the surface. Then I kicked out that last ligament on my right leg. Dammit. How did I get here? How did you get here? Who’s playing your gigs?
They both turn away from me, look at each other shake their heads.
Raf: You can have her. I’m done
Raag: No you take her. I can’t deal with this back and forth anymore. This is sheer madness.
ME: Really? After all this you both gonna just walk away? Ok. Go. GO. I yell as they both walk out the door.
Raf, waiting 7 minutes comes back in and says, Sorry, but that was the best way to get rid of him.
ME: You Jack-ASS. I can’t believe you just did that to me when I’m laying here half dead.
Raag: 5 minutes later comes in shaking his head. I knew you’d pull this. Are you two ever going to stop your ridiculous fighting and just do this already?
Raf and I just look at each other.
I look at Raag looking at me.
Raag says: Well? In or out, cuz the next time I walk out the door I’m not walking back in.
Raf: Good luck with that. I’ve been saying that for many moons now.
Raag: Well do something about it. Put us all out of our misery. F this. No one has done anything to hurt anyone here. Let’s just all be friends, play music and get drunk
ME: You guys stop messing with me. You make my head hurt. And please not another mission. Hey wait. I have an idea. Maybe… Let me make a call.
ME on the phone: Look that yacht is just gonna sit there until the Auction. Don’t you think we earned a couple months floating between beaches. On the Ice Queen.
VOICE on the other End: No they won’t go for that.
ME: Come on. Remember that lead we had a few weeks ago? Send us out on a multi-island surveillance detail. Certainly all of us involved, knowingly or not, should be able to use those toys before they’re sold for pennies on the dollar at police auction. What better cover than that?
Can we please? Please? Please? After everything that we’ve been through give us that.
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About the Book
Paradise is found in a vivid, colorful world under clear blue tropical waves, as sea turtles and bright fish become her dive buddies. She finds serenity in the serenade of a hot, young musician. His beautiful soul carries her to the outermost galaxies, but is this love or just her imagination? Love is delayed and faith is tested when a second musician enters the picture.
She is caught between self-interest and national security—a decoy that makes Big Brother’s ever-watchful eyes cross. Solace is found beneath the placid Pacific until climate change brings winter waves, currents, and surf so strong that there may be no returning from the sea. How does one distinguish between coincidence and the intricate connection of life’s unseen undercurrents?
Time moves on. Peace found beneath the ocean is not found on dry land as health concerns and bills overtake her. In her darkest hour, lessons are learned. The world crashes in on her soul like a tidal wave tossing her around the sea. She is caught in a tsunami, wave after wave after wave, with no way back to shore—or is there?
About the Author
The author is a single woman always looking for love in the wrong places, overly tied to her persona as an engineer, SCUBA Instructor, Sea Captain. 15 years swimming, diving, boating in the Caribbean teaching and taking my diving family to favorite watering holes leads to me buying a little bar on a remote desert island until hurricanes and a drastic change in the country’s leadership blow me back to the real-world where I can’t help but try to make the world a better place. Someone’s gotta do it. Long accused of overactive imagination, as I remain stuck home alone, first with COVID and now with lingering debilitating injuries and inexplicable down-for-the-count head pangs, I’m turning years of fun-loving life into books. What’s a girl to do, but journal and go listen to music, except when one can’t.