Coralline Nightmare

My greatest fear is that I will fail to live the life of my dreams. This feeling is exemplified in a recurring nightmare that I have. This nightmare comes a few times a year at this point in my life. It always catches me off guard because it does not contain any stereotypical nightmare elements, and so does not seem like a nightmare at first. There is no menacing antagonist, no insurmountable task like having to draw milk from a lizard, no overwhelming homework assignment with a surprise due date (an imagination that fortunately did not follow me beyond my college days). What scares me about my nightmare ─ the Coralline Nightmare as I have come to call it ─ is the uncanny realness of the whole thing. It is something that could happen. Something that might already be happening and thus is my worry when I regain consciousness.

To understand this nightmare I need to share with you a bit about myself. If you’ve read other parts of this website, you will know that I am from Bermuda. I moved to Northern California when I was 18 to go to university and I have been living here ever since. When I first moved to California, I would jump at every possible opportunity to go home. Winter break? Home. Spring break? Home. Summer vacation? You betcha ─ Home. It was something I never gave a second thought. Time off? I’m going home to see my parents, Nana, auntie, uncle and to check my bredrins and acegirls. Everything changed five years ago when my parents left Bermuda and moved to Maine. Suddenly, going ‘Home’ was not so simple. Of course I had many friends and family I could stay with in Bermuda, but nowhere I could post up indefinitely. Ever since my parents left, going to Bermuda has felt more like a visit than a homecoming. A vacation with a clear end date, the day that I “have to go back.” As my obligations with work and school in California continued to mount, I found it harder and harder to make my way home. Bermuda, once my home-base, started to feel like the opposite pole of a magnet, repelling my hand the further I reached to grasp it.

It is within this context that my nightmare takes place. It goes like this. I land in Bermuda. Sometimes I am staying at my Nana’s yard, sometimes with my mates. I am always somewhere comfortable, somewhere I can walk out to the street, stroll up the hill and take in views of the ocean. It is my first day and I do what I always do on my first day back: I go to the beach to swim amongst the coral reefs. This is a cathartic experience for me. I am happy to do it alone and I often prefer it that way. But this time I call for friends to join me. I want to feel their eyes on me. I want them to see me standing on the sand dunes veined with crops of salt-worn plants, surrounded by water the colour of blue lightning. I want them to see what I long to see, that is a scene so typically Bermudian that it could not possibly be another place and to see me in it, to see me belong there in such a way that I could not belong to anywhere else.

But I do not get in the water. I am scared to risk losing the company and validation of my friends to steal a glimpse of the world beneath the waves. I tell myself that the anxiety I feel is unfounded, that I do not need anyone to see me here to know that I am welcome in this land. I tell myself that all I need to do is let my body sink below the surface of that ocean and all my fears, my trepidations will wash off of me like sargassum lifted from the beach by a rising tide. But what if I am mistaken? What if I am not welcome in the world below? What if I am a danger to the creatures that live down there? If what we do impacts the world around us then surely mine is a negative impact; for how could I say that while California I have done all in my power to protect our reefs? I could damage the reef or on the reef damage myself. I cast a net into my mind, hoping to catch excuses ─ a net with a tight mesh so I bring up many. It is better to stay above the waves in the company of those who love me, I decide. And this is only my first day. I will have another chance.

The week goes on. I give less thought to visiting the reef, but I take care to keep the ocean in view. In fact, I plan my days around being able to see the ocean. Starting at the westernmost island, I gradually make my way east along the archipelago, sewing the islands together. Sometimes I go from one friend’s house to the next, being sure to arrange that we are outside on some balcony or grassy knoll within view of the piercing blue water. We talk, but I am absent in the conversations, wholly absorbed in wondering what is happening on the reef. People around me are talking but I seem to be stuck on a radio frequency different from the rest. I hear fragments of what they are saying but never enough to know what is going on, enough to know they are saying something but not enough to know what. I attempt to compensate, feigning participation in the conversations with melodramatic gestures and exaggerated responses. I feel out of control, like a spectator observing my words and actions, only coincidentally I am viewing it all from inside my own head. I feel out of sync. It’s like listening to a favourite song but only being able to focus on the time-counter instead of the rhythm and lyrics, dancing along to the blinking of numbers instead of the bass that everyone else hears.

Other times I make my way along the shore but scarcely leave the seat of my motorcycle. I stop incessantly at every possible pull-out, hoping for a better view of the ocean than I had at the last place I stopped. Often my effort is rewarded, not only with breathtaking views of the expansive blue realm but with glimpses into the ongoing beauty of the world beneath the waves ─ a group of parrotfish schooling, a whale exhaling clouds of breath on the horizon, a spotted eagle ray flying with its wings spread above the ripples of sand on the ocean floor. It is almost an exercise in museum exhibit design: How close can I bring myself to the artifact I long to understand without touching it, without leaving my mark?

The week goes on. I cross over from the “I just got here” phase to the “I’ll have to leave soon” mentality. This is where my sense of control degrades completely. I tell myself that the ocean is overrated, that I don't need it to enjoy myself. “In fact,” I say to myself, “I have everything I need to entertain myself right here at Nana’s house.” I ignore the texts I get from friends and family, or I lie to them and say that I am too busy to link up. I shelter inside the small single-story cottage with the curtains drawn and the A/C blaring and try to bury myself in a good book. It is impossible. The pages feel like concrete in my hands and the words seem to be written in another language. I let the book fall to the floor with a thud. I pace the room, drawing smaller and smaller concentric circles with my feet. I try to run but I cannot dodge furniture fast enough to get up to speed. I feel like the strings of a guitar; struck, bent, pulled in a thousand different directions. I need air. I scramble for the door, fumbling at the lock in the dimly lit entryway.

I exit the house, stepping out into the deep, steep-sided valley where Nana’s cottage sits. The air is nauseating. I can hardly bear the grotesque colours of the world around me that wash into my eyes. It is as if each object appears before me with the intensity of the Sun. I am suffocating beneath the verdant green of palms and screwpine. Sweat beads on the limbs of these plants and when it evaporates it suffuses the air with a dank mist. Through the mist, I see the faintly contoured silhouette of a hill, behind which the Sun has set and beyond which I hear the mournful call of the ocean. I mumble something into the close air as I try to walk up the hill, dragging my bare feet across the coarse asphalt. I reach forward with my hands and as I do I reach into the next phase of the dream.

I open my eyes. I am in bed. I sit up quickly as if in haste and then, calming myself, I exhale. I am in Nana’s house. It is morning. I steady myself on the thin pull-out mattress. I watch dust float in the golden beams of light that break in through the window. This is my last day. Soon Nana will come home from church and she will ask if I am ready to go to the airport. Not one to be late for a flight, I shove my belongings into my duffel bag and tidy the room. Still, I have not touched the ocean.

Nana waddles in through the open front door. “Ay, Andreas,” she squeals in her adorable Grenadian accent. “We’d better be going to the airport quick, you don’t want to be late.” I step out into the limestone hallway. “Ya, Nana, I’m ready to go.” We squeeze ourselves into her tiny plastic car and make our way east toward the island with the airport. I feel… free? Free from the anxiety of the past week. Free of the expectations that come with knowing or not knowing how I will spend my days. Somehow as we drive to the airport, as we go to meet the one true appointment of this nightmare, I feel unburdened, free of obligation. We pass limestone quarries, small markets, people selling fish on the roadside. I find myself thinking less about the ocean and more about the people of my country. The people who came before me. The people who surrounded me when I was growing up. I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude for having known this place as home. I don’t know if my shift in mindset brings about the change in my environment, or if the anticipation of a change in my world precipitates my new way of seeing things. My perspective expands, like realising I’ve been looking at a painting through a microscope and now I am seeing it with my naked eyes, the way it was created. No forethought goes into what I say next. The words flow from me as naturally as air leaves lungs: “Nana can you pull over up ahead?”

We come to a stop in a bend of the road that overlooks a small cove. You might think that at this point the Sun comes out from behind the clouds, soca riddims start to jam, a bunch of my mates jump out of a nearby bus shelter. In truth, the next sequence is surprisingly normal. There is a light breeze that rocks the surface of the ocean, making it ripple ever so slightly the way coffee moves about as you set a cup down on a table. Flocks of scooters, cars, buses, taxis and tractors cruise by, loosing a chorus of cheerful greetings with their horns when they see someone they know (which is often in Bermuda). Plunging my arm into my bag, I retrieve my diving mask and step out of the car. I kick off my docksiders and march through the ankle-deep crabgrass down into the small sandy cove. If before I was the strings of a guitar, now I am Jimi Hendrix, listening carefully to the rhythm of the Earth and laying down my own psychedelic reply. That our role in the symphony of our lives can change so vastly so quickly is at once the joy and horror of dreams ─ and I wonder if the same doesn’t happen to us when we are awake.

I stand in the sand of the cove, bits of dry sargasso weed sprouting up between my toes. Before me is not an area I have been to before but rather an amalgamation of many of my favourite places back home: the seagrass beds of Shelly Bay; the emergent wreck of Nonsuch Island, the sprawling forereef of Kitchen Shoals. I feel alive. I am no longer the fearful creature who braces itself for the impact of the world. I am a man who dives headfirst into the world and embraces the effect it will have on him. With my arm looped through the plastic strap of my diving mask, I launch myself into the cerulean water. I feel the ocean seep into me, buoying me up against the Earth which pulls me down. I slide my mask off my arm and stretch it over my head. Holding the top of the mask against my forehead with two fingers, I tilt my head up toward the surface and slowly, forcefully exhale through my nose, expelling the water from in front of my eyes. I pull my hand away from my face.

Balance. Balance in everything I see, in everything I hear and feel. The colours of the reef alone, so beautifully proportioned. The vibrating, earthy browns of sea rods swaying in the current, sweeping across stands of star coral which glow canary yellow. Bordering these, colonies of encrusting algae ranging in shades from the orange of hot coals to the pale pinks of dried hibiscus petals. And strewn throughout, outcrops of bare rocks which seem to drink in the melody of other colours. And the sounds! Sounds of every shape and orientation. The fricative jolts of claws and jaws meeting meals; the seismic rumble of engines in the water; the intangible sound water makes as it moves around your body; the gurgling sound of air bubbles leaving my lips; and the profound, peaceful silence that comes at the bottom of a breath.

The temperature of the water is impossibly perfect. It neither robs me of heat nor leads me to sweat. I feel naked, naked as the creatures I see around me ─ but at home, in my place just as they are, though they may be residents while I am but a visitor to their world. Things start to make sense in my mind. The impermanence of everything. I know I am dreaming. I know that in real life I cannot breath underwater as I do here now. In real life I must live on the surface, destined only to spend time on the reef as a guest. But does that make my time here any less precious? When I return to Bermuda as a visitor, does that mean that I belong there any less than when I lived there? I see here that belonging is an action, it is something to live and re-live in every moment of my life. It does not matter that I don’t get to be here all the time to experience this feeling. What matters is that I know this feeling exists. To feel that I belong is a feeling that may be activated by my surroundings, but it is a feeling that lives inside of me. For months, I have been telling myself how lucky I am to have a place where I feel like I belong. But now I realise it is more simple than that. I am lucky to even know what belonging feels like.

When I wake, everything is different. Whether I wake up in a bed in California, at my parents house in Maine or in a tent somewhere in between, wherever I am is always colder, drier, higher in elevation and (the biggest difference) has a horizon made of solid rock rather than liquid ocean. Yet the belonging I found in my sleep remains with me like a song or a prayer known by heart. I know one day I will return to my country for good, and bring the belonging I have inside of me to the place where I first discovered it. I know where I need to go. I do not know how to get there, but I know where I need to go. I know how lucky I am.

Why did I share this story? For one, I want to be clear about how my passion for our reefs manifests in my life. I am not interested in coral reefs as a concept; I am interested in coral reefs as a context, the cultural backdrop that frames the world where I came to know existence. The reefs help me to understand that my experience is but a fraction of the ecosystem in which I exist. Grew up on the crown of a volcano with 60,000 other primates all vying for space. Our migratory routes are roads with names, our nests are houses with titles and rents and owners. But all of this is a fraction. Beyond the shores of our society is another world, a larger world. Larger in size, in age, in life as judged by the number of species which call that world home. That world is our reef. If our island is a tree, then surely the reef is its roots.

My hope is that we will all come to know our reef and that by knowing it we might love and care for it. My fear is that we will forget the reef, neglect the creatures that live there and deny them our aid. Reminding myself that we do not have the damaging practices present in other reef systems ─ dynamite fishing, coral poaching ─ does not comfort me. My worry remains that, without precedent to the contrary, our island will fall into the hands of other cultures who will not spare it the damages that we abstain.

The other reason I share this story is because I want to be more open about my personal and professional motivations. I want to dedicate my life to protecting the environment of Bermuda. The reefs, themselves several times the size of the islands, are an essential part of that mission. In this story I hoped to capture the gravitational attraction that pulls me toward the coral reefs of Bermuda. The reason I want to study coral reefs is not to build on the work I have already done. It is not because of the existing research resources in Bermuda. And it’s definitely not because I hope to see significant monetary returns for the work I put into understanding our reefs. The reason I want to study our reefs is because the idea of doing so literally keeps me up at night ─ and the idea of not doing so haunts me in my sleep. At this point in my life, I don’t know how else to say it but that I feel I was put on this planet to be a student and advocate of our reefs.

What does this story mean for you? Why should you read this story or recommend this story to another person? Well, whoever you are, there is a possibility that something keeps you up at night. Not something that you are afraid will happen. But something you are afraid will not happen. A dream so big, an idea so beautiful that it seems better to let it live perfectly in your mind rather than strive for it and risk failure. Whatever it is, I sincerely encourage you to go for it. Risk failing. Fail significantly, fail memorably. It may not come easily and it may not come as soon as you’d like, but when you make your dream a reality you will be glad to know that you fought for it with every bone in your body.