I Love The Sea

i do, i really do! one would think a love for the sea is a natural thing for an islander like me. but it's like i found a lost love just now. i had to go to europe to find this out about myself, but i hope it's not too late for this love affair. :)

i LOVE the bluish-greyish(!)-greenish hue of the water (varities of which range from the deep blue of the mediterranean to the grey-green of the atlantic), the feel of sand between my toes, the smell of the sea breeze, the shiver a cold gust of wind brings running up my arms, the spray of water on my face when the waves crash on the shore, the way my hair (and my scarf or my skirt) gets blown away from me by the wind... i LOVE everything about the sea...

just in these last two or three months i've seen the pacific, the atlantic and the mediterranean... it amazes me how the hues of these bodies of water differ from each other. they're all still saltwater, i know, and chemically there really probably isn't any difference at all, but i would like to think there is something like a personality to these oceans... a "color" or "aura" that makes one ocean bluer than the other, or more ripply, or more "wave"-y, or "calmer"... i don't know. i'm probably waxing too melodramatic but i just can't help it.

the funniest thing about this is that... I DON'T SWIM. shame on me for being a filipino and not knowing how to swim! i haven't snorkeled, haven't gone on a dive, haven't seen any fish up close and personal except for Nemo and the "Jaws" shark robot at the Universal Studios tour. the Philippines is chockful of diving spots, wrecks, coral reefs, white sand beaches... and all I can do is the freestyle in 4 feet of water. at five feet, i prefer to tiptoe, and beyond five feet, i prefer to be on a boat and out of the water.

one of the first things i'll be doing (aside from learning how to drive) when i get back to Manila is to take swimming lessons. seriously. i took swimming lessons in college at UP but i never got to treading because i was absent (for real!) when we got to the lesson about treading water. got an uno (thats an A+) for my freestyle though and a dos (thats a B) overall. but throw me in the middle of the ocean and i'll die in ten minutes flat. or even less, actually.

they say there are times you have to force yourself out of your comfort zone to really live, you know? in the water is one of the zones i'm real uncomfortable in. like a fish out of water in reverse. it's time for this to change, i think. i'm now ready to throw in the towel (quite literally) and jump into the pacific. (...now if i can only stand to wear a bikini in the atlantic coast of northern france... ;-p!)