The Irish Dolphins Address
Ireland, summer 2002
The Irish ‘Burren’ reminds one of an extraterrestrial landscape, but it is the prehistoric churchyard of the Atlantic Ocean. Bones of its inhabitants were gathered by the West winds, compressed to limestone by the Ice Ages and eroded by the eternal rains. Along the shoreline the ocean has carelessly coughed up chunks of rock, but in many a nook and cranny rare and delicate flowers grow, that form a touching contrast with the grimness of the broken blocks. Just before where these descend to sea level like an amphitheatre, the swell quiffs in white sprays over trip rocks. Far away the Aran Islands lay like whales resting in grey.
Before I enter the water I always look down from the Sperm Whale rock. Oftentimes the ocean growls at me in cruel sloshes, but now a friendly ripple smiles across the lucid water. On my left foam bubbles mark the monoliths that briefly bulge in the ebbing tide. On the seabed rectangular stones are framed in swaying seaweed. The sand meanders in nearly black and white washboard formations. The ocean is smooth enough to reflect the clouds. It is hard to imagine that, where only days ago the ocean in giant steps burst on the rocks, she is tip toeing into infinity now.
Every now and then with sudden force the sea throws a wave into the stone mill at my feet. This is a very smooth hollow, carved by perpetually rolling stones and driven by the breaking waves. I you leave the water here, your dripping will trickle in drawn-out tears along the smooth undulating face of the rock.
After a year I have returned to ‘Pollenawatch’. This means: ‘A hole for a boat’. From here it is about 500 meters to the slipway. This is shelter that ‘Dusty’ has chosen two years ago. As a sculptor I have been studying whales and dolphins for 16 years and by swimming with them I try to gain a better understanding. I use a monofin for thrust and with a self-developed ‘WaterWing’ I try to be a party to Dusty’s maneuvering. Much to my joy she fully rewards me with her presence.
To get a better grip on our encounters I have taken notice of her different ways of approach:
1 – ‘Shoot’-she always starts with shooting by me at high speed.
2 – ‘Circle’-next she turns in circles around me.
3 – ‘Sneak’-then she sneaks up on me, usually from behind and sometimes from below.
4 – ‘Stroke’-when I reach out my hand to her cautiously maneuvers closer and lets herself be stroked.
5 – ‘Game’- an ever growing set of games.
6 – ‘’scort’-stands for ‘Escort’. When I leave the water she usually escorts me until knee-deep.
When, on impulse, I pushed the waterwing down steeply, it stately sailed away. Only just after having lost its momentum and starting to travel upwards, the wing was intercepted by Dusty. She had been swimming with it before, but that was at the surface and there the wing lingered at her melon (forehead), until it got washed over by a wave.
She had to find a way now to prevent the wing from floating upwards while she was pushing it.
I could see her think and then I also saw her solution: she turned around her longitudinal axis, keeping the wing down with her rostrum, while pushing it with her melon.
This was more than I ever hoped for. To be right on top of a dolphin, that solved a definitely new problem with nothing other than the build of her own body. But the next time she tried to push the waterwing in a vertical position and the time after that she discovered that it loses buoyancy when moved into a trajectory.
Soon she manipulated the wing with playful ease, using qualities of her body that linked up with the hydrodynamics of the waterwing. Apparently she is capable to recognize, contemplate and incorporate these into her own behavior in a way that defies any prediction.
“Very slowly she swam in front of me and surprised me by pushing the wing like a tiara, her very first, and relatively primitive, method. Then she took it, slowly and very explicitly, in front, with her rostrum vertically down. Then she moved it under the tip of her rostrum, with her head tilted up, a new variant. She turned and came towards me at about six meters deep. She caressed the wing, bounced it to and fro, let it slip along both sides of her rostrum, pushed it off and caught it back, while the position of her body changed from belly up to head down, weightlessly gliding through the wet dimension. I was holding my breath at the surface.”
One of her favorite games is playing ‘hide and seek’. You see her disappear in a curve into the distant haze and think you can calculate whereabouts she will reappear. And just when you expect her there, she dashes triumphantly in from the opposite direction. And when I reach out my hand, her head will stay, while her body sways on until she lies in line with me. But do I come to fast to her, then she will shy away, only a little, and leave me just the touch of a fingertip.
She watches me closely when I maneuver. She studies my contact with water, like I do hers.
Sometimes she rises to take a breath. I don’t understand how she does this. As if she switches on an internal ascent, because there is no fin movement to it. Maybe she increases her body volume by straining a muscle group.
Not everybody always behaves in subtle ways. Quite a few people grab at her or even try to jump on top of her. Dusty seems hard to annoy. Only once I saw her slapping someone with her fluke. But she does know more refined revenge: a woman who was forcing herself upon Dusty with exceptional impudence was led time and again into the yucky mass of jellyfish and rope weed.
Apart from their nasty qualities, jelly fish do possess a definite beauty in the way of large flowers. When, after having been a nuisance for weeks, they suddenly disappeared, I quite missed them. When we were romping, no seldom Dusty was watching over me. Once I let myself drift upwards and would have surfaced with a jelly-fish hat on my head if Dusty would not have whipped the menace to a spool with a deliberate swipe of her fluke.
Initially I stroked Dusty firmly, to make sure that she would feel it. But one does not necessarily stroke a big woman harder then a more slender one? It is much more the way in which one strokes, with small tickles or circular wipes, or so. Not the pressure per square inch. Dusty feels the softest touch and enjoys the intimate tenderness of being cherished in affection.
Before, Dusty had turned herself under my stroking hand in such a way that I met small injuries and torn loose fragments of skin, so I could give them a closer look. This was no coincidence, but accomplished with intent and superior steersman ship. Thus too, that almost very last time when very purely and knowingly she let my hand stroke her vagina. This startled me, I never sought it, I must have blushed long and hot, but every time I think of this, I feel how close I have been to a dolphin.
Jan Ploeg, December 3rd 2002
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