Deep down in the murky depths, my friend, on the bed of this vast Loch is where you find your host of this rather dank dark blog. In truth it is where you will nearly always find me. And what, you may rightly ask, am I doing down there? Good question. Were I to take it literally I would say I am puffing on a pipe as I always do. Not a tobacco filled implement but a ribbed plastic hose which is attached to a large rusting machine sometime abandoned but still mostly functional. It pumps the air which in turn keeps my lungs alive. Not the perfect situation but the only one.
Alternatively I could take the question to be enquiring how I came to be down here. That sadly has been lost to me. I am where I am without much of a notion as to how I came to be here. That is not to say all that went before is darkness. Far from it. Constant memories roll past my mind in fleeting glances giving me hints as to the person I once was but I have spent so much time trapped down here that it is a foreign almost forgotten former existence. It is a past life lived once in the current one. I know though that it was on the other side of the water's surface to which I now find myself.
This situation I now find myself in with vague amnesia is a curse. I cannot let go of the feeling that I am being punished for some some past bad deed which I cannot recall. This existence is a sentence I must live out forever more until some unknown external source outwith my control decides otherwise. This fate reminds me of the drowning cells of 17th century Amsterdam. Back then in the house of correction young convicts were placed in a sealed cell which housed only a running tap and a hand pump. I puff where they pump so as not to drown in the water.
At one time I spent long periods wondering who I was without ever finding an answer in those brief vague recollections that came and went. That question has since been superseded by another: what am I? I am not a merman or at the very least I cannot accept I am. I am human. Surely I am human. A cursed human. Experience has taught me so. They tell me otherwise but I know what I am. Or at least I did know what I was but for the insistence of others having me doubt what I would otherwise know to be true. Still I cannot accept what they tell me is the truth. Not while my own mind tells me otherwise.
This inky blue may be where I now reside but it is not my home. It does not feel at all natural to me. Once from afar it was beautiful to me, that much I can remember, but deep within its clutches that beauty has been lost. I feel all its weight and pressure crush me and desire nothing more than to get back to my own world. The curse though. I am somehow cursed to stay here forever. My own world shunned me and here I am exiled never to return.
No I am trapped on the bed of the Loch forever more puffing on this pipe. It is an existence I would not wish on anyone. That air I breathe is not strong and pure but instead weak and tainted. And the machine that pumps it it not perfect. Sometimes the air only comes to me in little wisps which send me into a panic. This though is nothing compared to when it stops completely and leaves my lungs collapsed fearing it will never work again. But it always does. Am I not testament to that? Still though I cannot help fearing one day it will stop forever and my heart with it.
Down here I am not alone however much I feel it. The merfolk come and they go. None of them can understand me. They may even loathe how pathetic I am. The strong ones in particular look on me with disdain. It is irrational to them that I cling to this artificial apparatus rather than freely swimming among the wonders of this aquatic heaven. While they live out their lives as they want to do I am stuck in the one place forever more where I know for sure I can breathe.
They tell me I am one of them. They ask me to accept that. Look how they breathe underwater without the need for false a respiratory device. I am one of them they tell me. Release the fear. Give myself to the water and she will look after me like everyone of her other children. That is what they say but I am not one of them- I am not. I want to believe them but I cannot so I cling to my iron lung at the bottom of the Loch forever in this state. The merfolk pass by less now than they did. The water dwellers have abandoned me like my former brothers and sisters of the land. I am both yet neither. I am a limbo creature physically in the deep and mentally walking on the earth.
Lost, lonely and in solitude I have one one friend who has never deserted me. She, Hope, is all I have left. My beautiful friend has been battered over time by doubt but nonetheless remains as important as the pipe to my survival. Without either I would surely die. Hope is what propels me on occasion towards the surface. Hope yanks the pipe from my mouth and like an underwater trebechet catapults me upwards at speed towards that other world. This is borne of frustration and fuelled by a sort of cabin fever in the deep.
The ride is exhilarating and frightening. Its a roller coaster of emotions as the bright orb above finally comes into view. I see a blue sky shimmering above me with my eyes. I see a pump at the bottom in my mind's eye. With hands outstretched I try to reach but I start to slow down until I come to a free floating stop. I see blurry images of people walking on the land getting on with their lives oblivious to my call. I scream, I shout and I wave my hands but no one sees me. Memories come flooding in and as air is pushed out. Its like a dream. I see my former world but although it looks familiar it also looks unreal from down here. Sometimes I even see faces that I know but cannot place. Ultimately though as I start to suffocate I get scared and have to quickly dart back down to the pump to breathe again. The world I love and want however now strangely unfamiliar disappears into the black behind me.
Here I am, dear reader, puffing on my pipe once more as I do day in day out. Forgotten by the world above as I reside on the bed of the loch. Dreaming dreams of a return without ever being able to touch the realisation of them. But it doesn't stop me dreaming. And where there are dreams there is Hope. Hope kisses me on the cheek and tells me it will be alright. Where it is cold in the night down here I hold on to Hope to keep me warm at night dreaming of a future life on the surface.
Glaucus was a man who swallowed the forbidden herb which gave him everlasting life but also forced him to the sea forever never to see the land again. In the beginning when I searched for my identity I thought I may be him but I am not. No I am not Glaucus. I will not live forever. Unlike him I cannot live and breathe beneath the water. But also unlike him I hope to return one day to dry land. No not Glaucus at all.
