Dolphin Address 32
July 30th 2005
Everyone knows it. As a child you walk over a kerb and reach your arms to either side to stay in balance. But do you know why?
Tightrope walkers use long sticks, sometimes with weights at the ends. With this they dose their balance. A deviation is corrected by shifting the weight slightly to the side that feels too light. It is a play with gravity in which it is a matter of keeping to the center of the weight as good as possible.
Dolphins seem to be not only conscious of this principle, but go even further. I have often seen Fungi or Dusty jump out of the water in the immediate vicinity of swimmers or boats. Nevertheless they never hit someone or something, while especially the boats often move at high speed and the dolphin reasonably can not foresee from the water where these will be a few seconds after the beginning of the jump, that is where she will come down.
For this she has the option of correction to alter her trajectory through the air at the last moment. Her body, commencing from the beak until the peduncle constitutes the mass against which the peduncle and fluke can push off. Just like the swing of an arm in the restoration of balance on the kerb. This movement influences the trajectory of the entire body. Where we restore balance the dolphin changes her course.
This we don't copy. The closest to this form of navigation through the air would be an angular dive from the high diving board. Still I have learned from these observations. For many years I find great pleasure in walking over the rocks and still wonder about a situation in which my feet seem more intelligent then my head. Apparently they find their path in full autonomy. In 1996 in Dingle I wrote two poems about this phenomenon:
Steppingstones 1
On the beach
large and small
they fall
me into a rhythm
as I walk
I jump and I shuffle
I trip and I laugh
it is they and not I
that determine my path.
Steppingstones 2
The rocks suggest a rhythm to my feet
they space my steps and in a dance we meet
my toes they touch articulate
in shoes that seem indelicate
I have no goal
but stay in whole
and dry-feet reach the beach.
When on such a walk I have to cover a difficult stretch I take a not too heavy stone and use this to correct my balance. In case of a stagger I extend it to where I want to walk off. You don't really need a dolphin for this insight. But it does help.
Jan Ploeg, Meadow Fanore, July 30th 2005
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