My friends and I improvised a trip to a tropical island to escape cold and snowy weather and routine. Let's say it is known as the "Island of Charms", it really honors the name. Landing there was a gentle caress to the soul. Like the ones I've been missing, the longing relax. Welcome new year.
The cities had that refurbished vintage vibe that most Caribbean islands have, full of colors and happy pedestrians. And there we were, with our cameras on hand, trying to capture those colors without making justice to the beauty our retinas saw. You see, we are this strange generation of humans that live through lenses and flashes, that doesn't have memories anymore if not in those pixels. Everything recorded for a posterior (no-one?) voyeur. Surprisingly, we keep on living in the past through them, but in our brains... there are few true colors left we can remember.
But here we were, a full new-moon night, one of the darkest -or in another perspective, one of the most starry skies you would experience. Sailing on a boat towards a bay-reservoir surrounded by mangroves, one of those places where the Earth still resembles to what it was like until modern humans came. Our aim: to be observers of one of the magical gifts our mother nature created.
The first evidence were little sparks on the waves as the boat agitated the high saline and, therefore, warm waters. Is that real? Is the water looking like sparklers lit on a celebration? I had to dip my hand there... and voila! Hundreds of microscopical lights surrounded my skin with a pale green glow! Impatiently jumped on the kayaks, blinded by that impenetrable darkness that was only illuminated by our glowing strokes; the silence interrupted by our giggling. Like babies that made too much noise. And the emotion scaled up after all fears turned off... Splashing and swimming on those waters thriving in biological star-fires, while watching the stellated black vault in mirrorlike manor. Twinkling cells that switched up by motion, perhaps annoyed telling us "please do not disturb". Or maybe they also wanted to play with us and with the fishes that jumped out in the air, or rocketed like torpedoes leaving a phosphorescent trail.
Forgot to mention the number one rule for this place: no artificial lights. Phone screens down.
And now? There is no evidence on what just happened. No pixels on phones or GoPros, no bits uploaded to the Cloud, nothing. The phosphorescence was so quick and dim that only specialized cameras could pick it, but even in good bioluminescent nights it would be seen like "fake". We were left with just the photons going through the pupil to the retina exciting the cones and rods, and then to a cluster of neurons that will hold that memory. An instantaneous experience for a couple of hours. In time it might get distorted... at the end it will die with us.
So what happened could only be transmitted partially by oral or written description, just like the myths and legends of our ancestors, created for collective memory. Like me in this webpage, telling the story of the sea fire, full of adjectives expressing my emotions, in a language that is not my native -purposely picked- to show that no high-fidelity translation could be possible. This was something one can take but not give away. Something you can play but not reproduce. Even if we tried to reconstruct it, no virtual machine could remotely approximate to the in-person impression. There is no way a screen could mimic the combination of your six senses in time and space; the smell, the touch, the sounds, the light, the breeze, the wet salty water. The tiny little light igniting on your limbs because you move, because there is a reaction: like a dance, like a kiss. Our human experience, limited and at the same time infinite by combinations of sensations, will never get replaced by a copy. Is reality what we perceive as non-fake? Maybe it is what exists out of our human interpretation. It is beyond our brains and our desires; it has unpleasant sides, unexpected twists. And it can be beautifully surprising if we let ourselves dive into it.
So no records but my fast-beating heart and my brain full of dopamine. And a cluster of freshly excited neurons.
That was my wake up call, that was my lesson. For moving forward in this life, with my feet touching the grass, the sand or the snow, breathing, touching, observing. Feeling. The world is out there, and for me being in it I have to experience it in first hand. Get outside.
PS: a bloom of noctiluca reproduction, aka "the most brilliant night glow" can kill coral reefs by asphyxia. More blooms are seen in climate change. There you have the unexpected twist.
