June 27th, 2008

And We All Float On

People who know me a little know I don’t like the outdoors and I hate water and they make fun of me for it. People who know me even better still make fun of me for the outdoors thing, but ease up a little on me when they find out that my deal with water is more of a petrifying fear. I’ve heard it all before and I realize it’s something “normal” people need to do, so I just get through it. That sounds a little mean-spirited, but that isn’t my intent. I’ve just pretty much heard all of the “you don’t go outside??” and “you don’t swim??!” and “you’re outside? won’t you melt?” cracks. It’s fine. Really.

I say all that as preface.

I went out to Washington D.C. a couple of weeks ago to visit a friend. Apparently, the weekend I chose was the hottest weekend there’s ever been in D.C. If it gets hotter there, than I don’t want to know about it, We went to the National Zoo and saw a total of 5 animals, because even the animals knew better than to be out in that kind of heat.

We had access to a pool, and it was hot enough that even I thought it was a good option. There was a shallow end, so I could be comfortably above water but still be cooling off. Even in the shallow end, though, I still get panicky. I have to be near an edge, have to have my hand on something solid, something I can pull myself up to. If I kneel in the shallow end and water gets near my chin, I get a tightness in my chest and I find it difficult to breathe. If my feet can’t touch the bottom, I really do get panicked, really panicked. Can’t breathe, afraid, deer-in-headlights, the whole works. Fear. Abject fear.

I took swimming lessons about five years ago. I thought it might help with some of this. My instructor was… less than patient, shall we say. The first 15 minutes of every lesson was the same thing: me getting used to being in the water – not getting used to the temperature, actually getting used to the water and trying not to stop breathing from freaking out. By the end of my ten or so lessons, I actually was able to backstroke across the pool, and had started learning … the frontstroke? I don’t know what it was, but I know I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kick my legs in any sort of effective method.

Five years later, and this is the first time I’ve been back in a pool. I’ve forgotten everything, including how to float. The water is colder than it looks, and I think of Jack’s line in Titanic about how freezing water feels like “a thousand knives.” I eventually am mostly in and used to the temperature, but I have moments of panic. I feel I am going to slip and go under at any moment. I don’t feel safe.

There are Funnoodles available, so I get one, but even it is not helping. I can hold it underwater, so I don’t believe it will do the job on holding me up. After a few minutes of not trusting it, it is suggested to me that I get another one. So now I have two Funnoodles, and it’s actually not horrible. I get to the point where I can lift my feet from the bottom and rest on just the Funnoodles – on which I have a death grip, you understand – and it’s okay. I’m still in the shallow end, but I’m okay.

At some point, I also grabbed hold of the floating lounge she was laying on, another level of security. Somewhere directly after that, I made the conscious decision to launch out into the deep end. Funnoodles firmly wrapped around me and held in a hand-vise, other hand holding onto the lounge for dear life, I am soon over the deepest part of the pool. I don’t know how deep it is, but there is a diving board over it, and my feet are nowhere near touching.

The panic doesn’t start from any place in particular, it’s just all over me at once. I close my eyes, I look up, I focus on breathing. It doesn’t go away completely, but it lessens. We do a couple of laps around the pool, specifically getting near the edge so I can occasionally feel cement. Eventually, though, I push us back over to above the deepest part.

I’m floating. I’m disconnected. I imagine what it’s like to be in space, untethered by gravity. I blather about how astronauts train underwater, and how I could never do it. I can’t leave a moment alone – probably more insecurity.

I get a strange sense of peace floating there. There’s not any noise from the road, and the only other sound is birdspeak. I’m floating in a pool, I’m talking to a good friend, and everything is all right. It would be easy to pile meaning on top of this, some deep lesson to be learned about launching into the unknown or trusting or somesuch, but that would take away from the simplicity of it, I think, and would also venture into cliché territory. I think I’d rather just sing along with Modest Mouse:

And we’ll all float on, okay

May 6th, 2008

525,600 Minutes

My Birthday

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes – how do you measure a year in the life?

525,600 minutes! 525,000 journeys to plan.
525,600 minutes – how can you measure the life of a woman or man?
In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried.
In bridges he burned, or the way that she died.

How about love? Measure in love. Seasons of love.

-Excerpted from “Seasons of Love”

I was given another year, and my memory doesn’t allow me to remember everything that took place in it. The things that stay with me are the relationships built and friendships made. I wasn’t always so good at everything this last year, but I have good friends, and that makes for a good year. Thanks everyone. I look forward to this next year.

Comic courtesy of PBF Comics, which aren’t necessarily always something I’d recommend.

April 4th, 2008

Break Of Dawn

(The end of Impromptu Michael Jackson Week – five posts equals one blog week, as we all know.)

When I leave for work in the morning, it’s generally still dark. As summer goes on, it gets light before I’m out the door, so either way I miss the sunrise. There’s something about the beginning of the day, whether it’s cold and grey or warm and sunny or raining, it’s a beautiful time and I’m sorry I don’t see more of them.

I love this song by Cat Stevens, “Morning Has Broken” I actually fell in love with it hearing Ellen Greene sing it on “Pushing Daisies,” but his is the original version (you can hear it here). Here are the lyrics:

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the word

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day

I love the pictures the song paints, and I don’t really have much else to add to it.