Free Divers Quotes

There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame. The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love. The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love. The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, 'I am home' as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter mutters, 'I am me' on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on his acre'd marl - says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, 'I am home.

Are you an experienced scuba diver? Great, shed your gear, take a deep breath and become a one-hundred-foot free diver. Are you a badass triathlete? Cool, learn how to rock climb. Are you enjoying a wildly successful career? Wonderful, learn a new language or skill. Get a second degree. Always be willing to embrace ignorance and become the dumb fuck in the classroom again, because that is the only way to expand your body of knowledge and body of work. It’s the only way to expand your mind.

The way that led from the acute mental tension of the last days in camp (from the war of nerves to mental peace) was certainly not free from obstacles. It would be an error to think that a liberated prisoner was not in need of spiritual care any more. We have to consider that a man who has been under such enormous mental pressure for such a long time is naturally in some danger after his liberation, especially since the pressure was released quite suddenly. This danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) is the psychological counterpart of the bends. Just as the physical health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver's chamber suddenly (where he is under enormous atmospheric pressure), so the man who has suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health. During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences.

When she was free, the whale didn’t rush out to sea. Instead, she swam around and around her rescuers in joyous circles. The whale came up to each and every diver one at a time. She nudged them, pushed them gently -– maybe as her way of thinking them. What else could it have been? Several of the rescuers wept and later said it was the most incredibly beautiful moment of their lives. They said they would never be the same after the experience. And that is the best story I’ve heard to explain how it feels when you do a good deed and help somebody. You’ll never be the same after the experience.

A humpback whale off San Francisco got tangled in dozens of crab traps connected by about a mile of rope, with weights every sixty feet; the whole apparatus ran to well over a thousand pounds. Rope was wrapped at least four times around the whale’s tail, back, mouth, and left front flipper, cutting into the giant’s flesh. Though nearly fifty feet long and weighing about fifty tons, the whale was being pulled down and was having trouble breathing when divers got into the water to see whether they could help. The first diver was so aghast at the extent of the entanglement, he didn’t think they’d be able to free the whale. Further, he feared that the whale’s thrashing could entangle the divers, too. But instead of struggling to break away as soon as possible, the whale remained passive through an entire hour while the divers worked. “When I was cutting the line going through the mouth,” James Moskito said, “its eye was there winking at me, watching me. It was an epic moment of my life.” When the whale realized it was free, it did not swim away. Instead it swam to the closest diver, nuzzled him, then swam to the next one. “It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun,

Just as the physical health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver's chamber suddenly, where he is under enormous atmospheric pressure, so the man being liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health. During this psychological phase, one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators not objects of willful force and injustice. They justified their behaviour by their own terrible experiences. This was often revealed in apparently insignificant events. A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp, when suddenly he came toa field of green crops. Automatically I avoided it, but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted "you don't say? And hasn't enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed, not to mention everything else, and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats?!". Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats.

Yesterday I got a credit card application from a major bank with a variable rate of 12.99% to 20.99%. Such a deal. And what if I fall on hard times and lose my job? So, I wrote them a return letter: Dear major bank, Thank you for the opportunity to express how I really feel about your corporation. What I do appreciate, is that there is no stamp required for your return envelope. After tearing off all my personal information, so some dumpster diver doesn’t fill out your application for me, and find out he picked the wrong target; I just wanted to make one comment: Your practice of usury is despicable, along with crashing the global economy. Danny - I think I have my grandmother’s charm and wit. Too bad she’s not here to share it with. Maybe if every disgruntled person would use that free envelope and apply their creative talent, they might get the picture that we’re tired of this bullshit. Marcie, there are so many people you could visit and test your information extraction program on, so what are you people doing here? Is this just a practice run? Well, you wanted to know what I was thinking. And you wonder why I look to God for solutions. Wake me up when it’s over. Marcie - You are a crazy SOB. You want me to use my system to play Robin Hood. Danny - You’d make an excellent Robin Hood, make sure you get your merry band to sign on. Maybe that’s the reason we were connected by design. How much materialism do you really need? Some people take what they need from the orchard and other people pick the orchard clean. Marcie - You’re wondering what I’m thinking. I don’t want to mess your mind up with what I’m thinking, so let me simply say, I don’t approve of what some of these people have been doing for decades. Who do you think I am? Danny - Someone who frustrates me, don’t we have enough guessing games in life? Marcie - Marcie is a miracle worker, so what does that tell you? You do not even know what to make of me, someone who keeps coming back for you, someone who won’t let go of you. Danny - Why is it that there’s only a handful of words for truth and over 100 synonyms and derivatives for deception? Marcie - Are you surprised? Danny - It puts it in a different light when you start reading through the list. You may as well add amygdala hijacking. Marcie - Has Danny been bamboozled? Danny - You picked one with an unknown origin. Marcie - That is the best way to start a mind game. Danny - Okay, just for kicks, try saying synonym - cinnamon 10 times as fast as you can. From - "The Mind Game Company - The Players

Christopher reached out to pet Hector, who nuzzled against his hand. His gentleness with the animal was reassuring. Perhaps, Beatrix thought hopefully, he wasn’t as angry as she had feared Taking a deep breath, she said, “The reason that I named him Hector--” “No,” Christopher moved with startling swiftness, trapping her against the post of the stall. His voice was low and rough. “Let’s start with this: did you help Prudence to write those letters?” Beatrix’s eyes widened as she looked into his shadowed face. Her blood surged, a flush rising to the surface of her skin. “No,” she managed to say, “I didn’t help her.” “Then who did?” “No one helped her.” It was the truth. It just wasn’t the entire truth. “You know something,” he insisted. “And you’re going to tell me what it is.” She could feel his fury. The air was charged with it. Her heart thrummed like a bird’s. And she struggled to contain a swell of emotion that was almost more than she could bear. “Let me go,” she said with exceptional calm. “You’re doing neither of us any good with this behavior.” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Don’t use your bloody dog-training voice on me.” “That wasn’t my dog-training voice. And if you’re so intent on getting at the truth, why aren’t you asking Prudence?” “I have asked her. She lied. As you are lying now.” “You’ve always wanted Prudence,” Beatrix burst out. “Now you can have her. Why should a handful of letters matter?” “Because I was deceived. And I want to know how and why.” “Pride,” Beatrix said bitterly. “That’s all this is to you…your pride was hurt.” One of hands sank into her hair, gripping in a gentle but inexorable hold. A gasp slipped from her throat as he pulled her head back. “Don’t try to diver the conversation. You know something you’re not telling me.” His free hand came to the exposed line of her throat. For a heart-stopping moment she thought he might choke her. Instead he caressed her gently, his thumb moving in a subtle swirl in the hollow at the base. The intensity of her own reaction astonished her. Beatrix’s eyes half closed. “Stop,” she said faintly. Taking her responsive shiver as a sign of distaste or fear, Christopher lowered his head until his breath fanned her cheek. “Not until I have the truth.” Never. If she told him, he would hate her for the way she had deceived and abandoned him. Some mistakes could not be forgiven. “Go to hell,” Beatrix said unsteadily. She had never used such a phrase in her life. “I am in hell.” His body corralled hers, his legs intruding amid the folds of her skirts. Drowning in guilt and fear and desire, she tried to push his caressing hand away from her throat. His fingers delved into her hair with a grip just short of painful. His mouth was close to hers. He was surrounding her, all the strength and force and maleness of him, and she closed her eyes as her senses went quiet and dark in helpless waiting. “I’ll make you tell me,” she heard him mutter. And then he was kissing her. Somehow, Beatrix thought hazily, Christopher seemed to be under the impression she would find his kisses so objectionable that she would confess anything to make him desist. She couldn’t think how he had come by such a notion. In fact, she couldn’t really think at all.

She had wide shoulders, a tight waist flowing into rounded hips, and muscles on her fingers and forearms and neck. I guessed her back was also finely muscled, and her legs. It was muscle that comes from intensive training from an early age, the kind a trapeze artist or free climber or high diver develops. Not something acquired behind a food counter.

Do the places we inhabit confine us by their very nature? Are we always imprisoned, eternally imprisoned, in body, in place, in community, do even our minds imprison us? What would it be like to be free, even for a second? Is that death? Do we live only in that final moment when we flee our shape?

The female giant Pacific octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is a cunning creature. Larger than her male counterpart, she hunts only in the blackness of night. With more than two hundred suckers on each of eight undulating arms, she moves through the water with slow, graceful movements to stalk her prey. She is cunning too. She has the ability to change her appearance, color, and texture to suit her environment as she lies in wait. If brought aboard a boat alive, even full-grown, she can free herself through a space the size of a half dollar. One of the largest ever found, an incredible monster more than twenty feet across, was caught by divers on the western shore of Hood Canal near Lilliwaup, Washington, in a deep-water site of the Salish Sea locals call Octopus Hole.

By allowing an average of three minutes per trick, an enterprising prostitute could rack up her quota in five or six hours. This would net her about three hundred dollars a day after paying the madam her cut. By assuming a twenty-two-day work month, a hard-working girl could earn seventy or eighty thousand dollars a year, tax free. Also, every whore in Honolulu was guaranteed a full day’s work for as long as her stamina held up. The long lines of fighting men patiently waiting their turns was assurance of this. The lines started forming shortly after 7 A.M. when liberty began, and as the day wore on, the lines grew longer and longer and tempers grew shorter and shorter. The men at the end of the lines became edgy and concerned that they would not gain entrance to the house before their liberty expired at 5 P.M. This would mean five long days before they could come ashore again, if in fact they were not shipped out in the meantime. Only the vigilance of the military police kept fights from erupting.

We were disappointed that we had not been able to find any survivors on the sunken ships, but after six days of sounding, we were sure no one was alive within them. While our diving crews were occupied sounding the ships and freeing the USS Tennessee, the shipyard constructed two diving barges, each one twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. Buoyancy was provided by three cylindrical pontoons. Wooden planks formed the deck, while corrugated sheet metal on the roof provided protection from the elements. A long pipe spanned the upright stanchions along the side of one barge, which provided an area to hang the divers’ rubberized canvas dresses. Along the opposite side were hangers for the four sets of lifelines and air hoses. A large workbench was situated in the middle of the barge. Installed at one end was a wooden diving ladder that led down to the water four feet below. Next to the ladder was a table that held the diving telephone equipment. Four dressing stools were neatly stacked near the table.

The most desirable sea mollusk on the planet is the queen conch, too scrumptious for its own good. Once abundant throughout the shallows and coral reefs of South Florida, the slow-growing snail was nearly wiped out by fritter-crazed divers in the 1970s. Domestic harvesting of the species was outlawed. Today, the United States consumes eighty percent of all commercially sold conch. Most of it comes from the Bahamas and Caribbean islands, where the spiky, porcelain-lipped shells are plucked from the bottom one at a time by free divers. A small pick or screwdriver is used to punch a hole in the tip, severing the tissue connecting the animal’s tough, coiled body to its mobile lair. The flesh—a slimy, unappealing muscle—is then pulled from the shell and tenderized with a mallet.

According to free diver Natalia Molchanova, "What you do to start learning is you focus on the edges, not the center of things, as if you were looking at a screen.

He left behind him five or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on this verse in Genesis, In the beginning, the spirit of God floated upon the waters. With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic verse which says, The winds of God 36 Les Miserables blew; Flavius Josephus who says, A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth; and finally, the Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it, A wind coming from God blew upon the face of the waters. In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemais, great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book, and establishes the fact, that to this bishop must be attributed the divers little works published during the last century, under the pseudonym of Barleycourt. .........................Here is the note:— ‘Oh, you who are! ‘Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 37 and that is the most beautiful of all your names.

That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn’t able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, “the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast.” Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn’t come back either. And that’s the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you’ll always wonder if you could have gone deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back.