Submerged

Bodies of water such as lakes and oceans, according to Jungian theories, are often symbolic of the subconscious – light and images reflected off the surface while that lies below becomes progressively murkier and impenetrable. The lightless lowermost depths hold both terrors and treasures, populated (literally) by what appear to be bio-luminescent aliens, and (figuratively/symbolically) by memories and dreams.

Sometimes, either by design or by happenstance, things get dredged up from the bottom. Oarfish that show up dead on Bermuda beaches give credence to a belief in sea serpents, and personal effects from passengers aboard ships that vanished are found glistening in the sand and surf. So too memories, stirred from the Mariana Trenches of our personal histories, return to the surface.

I am thinking specifically of my love of aquariums.

When I graduated college in 1998 and moved to Seattle, I found myself needing, from time to time, a place outside of my home where I could collect my thoughts and find a source of calm during a somewhat turbulent point in my life. This led me to discover something truly marvelous – the Seattle Aquarium. Located on Pier 59 of the Elliott Bay waterfront, I discovered that watching the graceful movement of sea life put me into an almost immediately deep, trancelike state. Watching sharks and rays glide around their tanks, forests of brightly colored anemones swaying with the current, it triggered something in me. I found a little slice of aquatic nirvana, where all of the internal and external pressures in my universe melted away. 

I took this secret knowledge with me as I moved from city to city. In Chicago I visited Shedd Aquarium often. Here in Florida I’ve been to at least a dozen aquariums (my favorite of which so far has been Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota). I can sit in front of a jellyfish tank for hours, motionless, completely absorbed and unburdened by self-consciousness.

If I put any stock in astrology, I might chalk it up to my sign as a Pisces. But I don’t really subscribe to such notions (which, it should be noted, does not make me any less of a Piscean poster boy).

A number of years back I shared this with my mother, who responded with laughter. I was a little surprised (which is not to say that seemly inappropriate or incongruous responses are really all that uncommon in my family). She quickly explained that she hadn’t intended to be derisive. Rather, she asked me if I remembered the very first house I lived in, which couldn’t have been for more than the first year or two of my life. More than 40 years ago now.

I didn’t recall anything about it at all.

The reason she asked, she went on, was that, like any infant, every once in a while I would have a massive and prolonged crying fit. Nothing she did seemed to quiet me. Finally, she discovered that seating me in a stroller in front of the fish tank would cause me to go instantly silent, calmed at last by watching the fish in their tanks. Complete and utter tranquility. 

I too laughed when I heard this. I didn’t really have any other way to process this new intel. How fascinating and strange, that I should be composed of and driven not only by those things I remember from childhood, but those things even further back, forgotten fragments and vestiges of my pre-lingual world, when everything must have been a meaningless jumble of sensation. The machine language, ones and zeros, behind the very first lines of code written on the hard drive. Hello World!

The gemstone layered over and concealed by sediment at the very bottom of my private ocean. 

I think about this on the way to visit aquariums, which, as it has now been revealed, is also on the way to visit some of the first experiences meaningfully recorded by my senses. I think about it all the way up to and past the ticket counter, through the first set of interior double doors, and just up until I see the first fish tank. And then, blissfully, I think of absolutely nothing at all.