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During my first open ocean dive, I went down to 800 feet and turned out the lights. I knew I would see bioluminescence, but I was totally unprepared for how much. It was incredible! There were explosions of light everywhere, like being in the middle of a silent fireworks display.

I do still get shocked every once in a while when I catch my reflection when I'm walking past a glass building, but it's in my mind about getting older and finding out what I'm going to look like as it unfolds - or as it folds, depending on where the marks and scars land.

Since my first dive in a deep-diving submersible, when I went down and turned out the lights and saw the fireworks displays, I've been a bioluminescence junky. But I would come back from those dives and try to share the experience with words, and they were totally inadequate to the task. I needed some way to share the experience directly.

In the Marines, I was stunned, absolutely stunned, at everything around me, at what the world looked like.

One time on a dive, I wound up drifting up in darkness surrounded by billions of photoluminescent creatures. It was a religious experience, one only a poet could do justice to.

Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take.

Russell James asked me to shoot underwater. He tied my feet under the water. I don't know how many feet - maybe five, six meters. He tied me underwater and I had no air. Somebody had a tube, and they were giving me some oxygen, but I couldn't really see anything. Everything was blurry. I'm waiting for the oxygen - that was the craziest thing.

When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water in your basement except it happened to be in the auxiliary building of a nuclear power plant.

And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.

I guess I kind of lived in a fairytale world... looking at everything through rose-colored glasses. I probably always will, to a certain extent.