Dennis Hollingsworth

First Dive

As evidence that I have been resisting the siren charms of this seaside resort and working away in the studio and on the house and on settling into this new home... I hereby submit photodocumantation of my first dive.

Ok. So the water was too cold for me. I'm a warm water weenie. (That's why I haven't been a diver in California, despite the rich undersea flora and fauna of the Californian Pacific waters: it's too frickin' cold. Unbearable stabbing muscle pain and uncontrollable shivers don't make for a good day.)

The pic above is of the Cove (one of three beaches here, this one is the tiniest. There is a main beach and another that rents out sportcraft), shot a month or more ago. Here's a shot from yesterday:

I got a few good bod shots of Stephanie, but the censors have forbid me to publish them online. Here instead is a shot of these kid divers, all suited up and trooping off to a group snorkle. The topless custom is not yet blase to the young lads here as you might notice:

Knowing that this place would offer formidable distractions both familial and recreational, my strategy to both paint like a crazed hermit and partake of this lovely place is to shoot over to the beach for an hour, mas o menos. Luckily, I'm not a bake-for-long-hours-in-the-sun kind of guy (although it's fun once in a while). Yesterday was a test of this strategy.

This cove is the place where I had scattered my father's ashes a few years ago. It was around seven in the morning and everyone in town was asleep. Only the city street workers were out doing their rounds. I swam out to the center of the cove (where there is a bouy marking the spot) and opened up the plastic bag as the bloom of dust swirled all around me in this pocket of the Mediterranean Sea. I treaded water for a while and thought of my Dad, many mental pictures, especially of the diving we had done together. It was almost as if I could turn around and see him in mask and snorkle, hauling up a fish on a spear or shucking out an oyster for a fresh slurp of nature's harvest. He loved that.

So what I did in this first immersion was to swim out to the bouy, kick down and with the first dive, and grab a handful of sand to send to my brother back in the states. He'd like that, I'm sure.

Then, I jetted back to the studio.