The Zen of Snorkeling
People here are happy to talk to me about current affairs, about media issues and ethics, their “benighted country”, but they are also very keen to tell me about how beautiful the Philippines is and suggest travel itineraries. Journalism is all very well they say, but you need to have fun too, spend some time traveling and sightseeing.
Believe me, I don't need to be told.
So I went on a snorkeling trip to Apo Island, from Dumaguete off the coast of Negros Oriental, with Reuben and Melvisa.
I love snorkeling. I love it at Goat Island, I love it in Rarotonga and I love it in the Philippines.
I love floating suspended in the water, looking at the fish and I love the way they look curiously back at me.
Apo Island is an amazing spot. The coral is as diverse and beautiful and intricate as an underwater forest. The tropical fish, starfish and even shy sea-snakes are colourful and abundant.
Lots has been written about Zen and different activities, - the art of motorcycle maintenance, archery, a whole host of extreme sports have called on Zen imagery to describe themselves and the very singular act of concentrating on the moment which they require.
Let me add to this tradition by writing of Zen and snorkeling.
So snorkeling is like Zen meditation because you immerse yourself fully in another world. You put your head down into the water and suddenly all the annoyances and things you have to worry about above the sea just disappear.
It is so relaxing, so calming.
(Some people may prefer diving, arguing that you can immerse yourself much deeper and further into another world, but there is so much equipment and training and usually money involved. I like the simplicity of being able to drop into water with just a mask and snorkel and baited breath.)
All you have to do is float there and watch the sea reveal its wonders.
The stiller you remain the more you will see.
The Goat Island link even suggests learning to swim without using your arms so as not to startle the fish.
Another way snorkeling relates to Zen is that if you try and look ahead to see what's coming up, your vision becomes murky and obscured, whereas if you look straight down it's like looking through glass and you can see clearly through the layers of water all the way to its ripple patterned bottom where starfish have left the imprint of where they last lay.
Time slows and you can spend hours of intense looking, getting lost in the shapes and colours of the coral formations.
Snorkeling and meditating are like metaphors for each other. Snorkeling the actual physical embodiment of what meditation describes.
And if you are patient, it will deliver strange and beautiful gifts.
I actually got seasick and sunburnt at Apo, throwing up over the side of the boat while the sea flashed red in my unsteady vision, but I don't care about any of that, what I take away from that day is not sunburn and seasickness, but the gift the sea granted me - a sea turtle.
Floating along immersed in the coral I suddenly looked up and there it was just ahead of me in all its placid seaturtley glory.
They have such thoughtful intelligent faces.
We looked at each other for a minute and I wondered what it was thinking.
Then it swam away from me in a wide arc and disappeared into the blue.
It was surprisingly fast and agile for something which appears so slow and ponderous, but then I guess the water is its element.
I know there are some people who come upon an animal and immediately think about killing and eating it, and really if you eat tuna you may as well eat sea-turtles because the light-lures which they use are responsible for the deaths of over 200,000 turtles a year (and that's only on the boats which are monitored), but for me seeing an animal in the wild fills me with delight and joy and wonder.
I wonder if Reuben and Mel had got to see the turtle, they wouldn't have ordered bluefin tuna for dinner that night?
Some other things I did while I was in Dumaguete were write a column,and meet Melvisa's family.
I was at the travel agency buying boat tickets and got talking to the agent. She decided I could write her weekly column in the Negros Chronicle for her - about what I thought about Dumaguete. They seem to like that here. To be really interested in how foreigners view their country, what they think of things here. It's impressively outward looking, more so than most countries I think.
Meeting Melvisa's family was nice too. I'm their new “god-daughter”.
They are one of those giant extended families you find here, where you can never tell exactly who lives in the compound and who is just visiting and who all the children belong to.
However it's easy to tell who the matriarch of the family is - Lola (grandma) Leah.
She is 92 but maybe looks 70 and she welcomes me into her home like some long lost daughter.
Her family tell me that I should come back anytime because “Lola Leah is always here waiting for foreigners to come and visit”.
Her sister is 99, she tells me and she had a grandfather who purportedly lived to 200 and slept with his eyes open.
Lola Leah doesn't eat meat, only fish and rice and vegetables.
They are a very religious family, with several pastors in their ranks and they pray for me when I get there, selecting bible verses and only using half the sentence so as to change its meaning to serve their purposes, with gay abandon. They enliven and indiginise the Christian religion with a very Filipino joie de vivre.
Normally someone mentioning God in every second sentence might get annoying, but it just comes across as a quirk of another culture here and I accept it with all the other peculiarly Filipino quirks.
As I've mentioned before, people here (and at home sometimes too) get a little concerned when I say I'm traveling alone. “Who is your companion?”, they ask, but Lola Leah gave me the perfect answer to that question when she said: “God is your companion!”
It is so great to meet someone so old but so accepting of my lifestyle.
In this deeply religious country no-one is going to be able to argue with “God is my companion”. It effectively silences any protests about the dangers of solo travel and I believe I will use it from now on.
In response to incredulous “you're doing what!?! you're going where?!?” I'll just be able to say “no no don't worry. God is my companion.” and possibly “I have a sea-turtle spirit-guide” as well.
Things are looking up.
Dumaguete traffic cop