Because everything would be what it isn't

Photo: Magnus Åkerblom-Wiker

"You need to work for the luck", the guide said. "Look for it, search the opportunities, find the position where it all looks amazing." It was like a small river and we swam close to the riverbank. It was sunny and the world looked green. We hung out there together at the side of the river, looked up at the mangrove, saw the roots from the jungle and stayed in the bright light. It was one of those moments that makes you want to stay forever.

"Alice: How long is forever? White rabbit: Sometimes just one second."

Photo: Magnus Åkerblom-Wiker

One afternoon we dove in Ponderosa, the gardens of Eden. We joked about it before we went in. I asked about the fruit. Apparently it was already eaten and I was reassured there were no snakes down there. Those are the ways you talk about something you have not yet experienced. Because when we were slowly leaving the cavern, just flying out in the sunbeams, seeing the jungle above the water and the flowers and roots growing under the surface it became clear that paradise is impossible to describe. And if this wasn't Eden, it was at least as close as you can get.

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was another person, then."

Photo: Magnus Åkerblom-Wiker

We were just up after swimming upside down viewing an underwater field with red water lilies and searching for the very small crocodile, when the heavy rain hit unexpectedly. So we just waited for an hour and went for lunch to let the rain pass. It was the last dive and after the sun had created a strange laser light in one of the inner domes, the rain came back. We surfaced for a while, where we could see the jungle, hear the rain and thunder and watch the birds flying in and out.

"You", he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world 
and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain."

And I knew we were blessed and privileged being here in this environment, finding a guide that had all the patience in the world with one taking photos, finding angles and in the need of a model and the other one wanting to analyse it, feel it and talk about it. I was really cold, though. I think we all were. It was the end and we had to go. And we just slowly swam back to reality.

"If I had a world of my own,

everything would be nonsense.

Nothing would be what it is,

because everything would be what it isn't. 

And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. 

And what it wouldn't be, it would."

Quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

All the Alice stories.