Bathymetry

For KJ

Your eyes hold a thousand different layers, a thousand sea states.  Looking into them is like looking into the feeling of abstract thought, that state of deep processing when my brain is working rapidly but so incomprehensibly that it feels blank, a swift current beneath a calm surface.  Reading them is like mapping a roiling sea, constantly changing and fathomlessly deep.  Unknowable, unreachable by concrete things like instruments or words, but I can gaze into the depths and gain some knowledge that could never be recorded on a depth chart or CTD profile or IR spectrometer, some understanding that could never be put to words or even music or art.  A reflection of some unutterable thought within my own eyes, the sea reflecting the sky, some deep mystery that is for me alone to hold in my heart and know its meaning, knowing with that same unknowable part of myself.  An entire universe is born in your eyes, planetary nebulae formed, gravity swirling gassy orbs into oceans, millions of years of evolution.  And plumbing in the depths I withdraw some fragile expression, like a deep-sea coral preserved only for mystery, which crumbles on the stage of a microscope.

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Perhaps this would be a good place to mention that soon I will be moving to a new city for two reasons: going to grad school to begin my research career in oceanography, and living with the man I love.  I could not be more excited about both of these things.