Beneath the Surface

100 miles east of the mouth of the Hudson River, off the New Jersey coast, under the sometimes placid, sometimes turbulent surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, is a canyon roughly a mile down and 270 miles long.  It's canyon walls "soar" to a height of three-quarters of a mile high from the bottom, making it roughly comparable to Arizona's Grand Canyon. Next time you're out in NY Harbor, visiting the Statue of Liberty, or at the Jersey Shore (with the cast of the recent reality TV show), imagine the Grand Canyon out there on the ocean horizon under water.

As David Byrne once chanted in one of the Talking Heads best songs: "There is water at the bottom of the ocean." Obviously, but the point here is there's other stuff beneath the surface of most things.  Sometimes what's beneath is minor and interesting, like a person's motivation for avoiding a conversation on a certain topic.  Sometimes it's massive and awesome, like the true causes of the near-failure of the American Banking financial sector.

The rather existential point I'm trying to make, is that there is always something "beneath the surface".  Mere optical observation and rote assumptions need to be tested.  They need to be probed.  Sometimes you need to dive a mile down and stand atop the cliffs of an underwater Grand Canyon.

NOTE: I wrote this post without the aid of any psychedelic or hallucinogenic chemicals of any kind.