On Running and Becoming Human by Thomas F. Carter

Author:Thomas F. Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Anchored off the coast of Santa Isabel, in the Galapagos, I slipped off the ladder down the side of the Santa Maria into the warm, aquamarine waters. I swam across the surface of the ocean, my face enmasked and immersed in the water, a snorkel facilitating my breathing by eliminating the need to raise my face out of the water. As I approached the shore, unbeknownst to me, sea lions awkwardly loped from the beach into the water transforming their movements from awkwardly herky-jerky to sublimely fluid and slick. And then suddenly they are there. Large, luminous dark eyes in seemingly benign faces with mouths lined with sharp canine teeth moving at a speed I can barely register, never mind actually reproduce myself. They are there rushing at me and then gone before I can even physically react. For a moment, I think the sea lion pups are going to swim smack into me. An utterly ridiculous notion. They, like other denizens of the sea, as well as most lifeforms, register my being across multiple sensory dimensions, inside and out, my temperature, my density, my velocity, and my intent: what I am, what I am not. In some ways, these infant seals know me better than I do. They know how and at what speed I will move before I do and anticipate my reactions to their movements before I can even contemplate reacting, much less physically move. Sea lions swim upside down, at least these pups do. They play a terrifying game of chicken with me. Their wakes create streams of bubbles, obscuring my vision as they swirl around me. I cannot see if they are even approaching. I am so frightened I stop swimming and float in the water, my body dangling down toward the bottom of the sea. I spin in circles to try and ascertain from which direction they will appear next. At least for me, it is terrifying as they swim directly at my face, bursting through walls of shifting bubbles, and then at what seems to be the last possible instant, flick and turn down the length of my body. If one runs into me I know I will come out of the collision worse than the sea lion. They, however, seem to be having the times of their young lives. There is no aggression felt in their approach; rather, it appears they are at play with this bumbling, lumbering oaf of a creature that has entered their realm.

When we swim we are immersed in an alien yet “natural” environment that is inherently part of the world yet, somehow, the assumption is that once upon dry land we are no longer immersed in the world. Nevertheless, we are still immersed in an environment, but it is in an ocean of air rather than water in which we are immersed. We are creatures of the air, but we remained tied to the terrestrial surface, the bottom of the ocean as it were. In that regard,

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