8:37 pm.  Twenty meters below sea level.  Suddenly, darkness.  I'm in the midst of a night dive in Sipadan, Borneo and my flashlight just went out.  I give my buddy the appropriate "I'm trying my best not to freak out" signal as he reaches for his backup light to hand over. Another world illuminates before my eyes.  Tiny flourescent phytoplankton swirl around me as nocturnal critters go about their nightly hunt directly below me.  What if my backup light goes out too?  What if a current sweeps me out to sea?  What if I run out of air?  What if my buddy swims off without me? What if a 500 pound grouper decides I look like a protein-packed dinner?  I could panic, but I won't.  Instead I'll just surrender to their intense world.  And follow my light...

The three of us swim together snapping mental images of glowing corals along the way.  Our senses are heightened.  The nitrogen tastes a bit dryer as my teeth tightly clench down on my regulator - to which my life is 50 percent dependant upon.  The other half of my life is dependant upon the attention and decisiveness of my dive buddies: two middle-aged Malaysian men whom I've only known for 48 hours but trust with my life.  My life of 24 years as a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend. 

"Doesn't SCUBA diving scare you?" is a common question people ask me after I tell them about my spring vacation.  "To be honest, no not at all.  At the risk of sounding like a granola-crunching wanna be modern day prophet, I find it meditative."  Meditation: something I've never been able to successfully do.  I can never seem to silence my mind:

Marion: Ok I'm meditating now.

Mind: You're not supposed to think about meditating, you're just supposed to do it.

Marion: Well how can I do something without thinking about it?  Isn't that just not doing anything, hence NOT meditating?

Mind: No, thinking of nothing is meditating.

Marion: Then nothing is meditating, so meditating is nothing, then I'll never really be meditating if I'm not doing anything.

Mind: Stop it.

Marion: What should I make for dinner tonight?

And so it goes.  But when you're twenty meters below sea level swimming against a current into the dark abyss with two Malaysians, you are able to think of nothing.  Suprisingly, you don't even have to think about breathing.  It just...happens.  Inhale...123...Exhale...123....Inhale...123...Exhale...123...Inhale.  Your autonomic self unconsciously creates a rhythmic chant that your somatic self unconsciously hums along to.  Then you enjoy the colors of the night, hidden by the daytime glare.  You enjoy the warmth of the moonlit sea in comparison to the chilly air above.  You enjoy the glow of your buddies' dive lights because it means that they're not too far away.  Another reason I love diving so much: comradery. Because we know that we are dependent on one another's sight, on one another's light, we form a lasting bond that never ends at the dock.  We ask questions about each other's backgrounds.  Are you married?  Do you have children?  What kind of life are you putting on the line each time you descend? We wonder where you've been, where you're headed next.  We wonder if we'll plan to meet up in the near future or stumble into each other on a remote island in French Polynesia by chance someday.

So the three of us enjoy each other's silent company for as long as a diver's license allows at depth...about 40 minutes.  Then, eye to eye, light to light, we begin our ascent to the surface.  Three minutes later I find myself floating on my back in the middle of the South Pacific looking up at a blanket of stars. One lone star falls into the horizon as Captain starts to sing, "Happy Birthday to you...Happy Birthday to you..."       

And we turn our lights out.