Jump In

Key West, Day Three

We had been out on the Gulf for a couple of hours. We'd shown up at the dock that morning, promptly at 10:50am (after some confusion regarding which dock in the busy marina), and were greeted by the drunkest man I'd ever seen before noon o'clock. (This is saying a lot, given the years I've spent working the brunch shift in Fed Hill.)

My boyfriend and I were both, justifiably, a bit skeptical about this individual captaining a boat that would take us out to sea for kayaking and snorkeling. The man was nearly falling off the pier, clutching his stool in one hand and a half-lit cigarette in the other as he explained his dual careers of charter host and stand-up comic since his emigration from Boston eight years prior. He pointed us in the direction of the vessel and encouraged us to climb aboard.

We were both visibly relieved to see two fairly competent-looking, and NOT intoxicated men bustling around the boat, readying for the charter. Drunky would not be steering us out onto the Gulf. He was merely the salesman, money collector, and recruiter. "Bad for business," the captain agreed sheepishly, "but the guy before him couldn't stop falling off the pier, he was so drunk."

We headed out, accompanied by a retired Tampa policeman and his wife, a young married couple, and two loud girls who talked the entire time. Even a couple of miles out, the water was clear to the bottom and impossibly turquoise. It seemed fake, especially with the backdrop of lush palms, expensive sailboats, and pristine blue sky.

Our first stop was a crop of mangroves in bafflingly shallow water several miles out from Key West in the Gulf. Here, we boarded our kayaks with the clear bottoms. We skirted over water ranging from a few inches to a few feet deep, and glided under mangrove branches that scraped the tops of our foreheads in an aquatic limbo. My boyfriend towers nearly a foot over me, and sitting behind me in a double-seater kayak turned out to be a bit more adventurous for him as we skirted through arboreous tunnels. We saw pelicans, herons, barracudas, and tiny little silvery fish. Far off to the south, cumulus clouds climbed high and let off lazy, rolling thunder.

The kayaking was only step one of the charter. After an hour or so of paddling around mangroves (during which time a couple of tiny minnows leaped suicidally into the kayak shared by the chatterboxes who shrieked and frightened off the more legit wildlife we'd all paid to see), we re-boarded the larger boat, kayaks lashed to the back and top, and headed further out to sea.

And anchored. There, in the middle of nothing but water. Rubber tubs of fins and masks came out. Snorkeling time. Here. Not safely tucked away in some tidepools or off of a little, benign island. Here, in the middle of the Gulf. Strap on your fins and mask and jump off into the abyss.

I watch too much Shark Week for this.

My boyfriend, college swimming athlete and adventure enthusiast, leaped off the boat eagerly and motioned me to follow. In open water.

A mainly benign fear of mine is open water. How often do you find yourself in genuinely open water? It's like being afraid of bald eagles. You're not often faced with bald eagles, so it's a dormant fear.

It's not that I'm not a good swimmer. Summers of lessons, ten years of neighborhood swim team, countless beach and lake vacations; I'm more than ok in the water. That's not what freaks me out. What freaks me out is the idea of being surrounded by miles upon miles of water, with no shore in any direction, the bottom far from my feet. The idea that you cannot see behind or around you, leaving you ultimately vulnerable to sea life and powerful currents. That movie where the couple finds themselves stranded in open water, with nothing but the sharks below for company? NNNOOOOOOOOPE. NOOOOO THANK YOU.

Everyone was just....jumping in. Like it was a pool. Off the side of the boat, some more daintily than others (it's hard to be dainty jumping feet-first wearing flippers, FYI). And, without giving it too much thought, because if I stood there and had a deep inner process with myself then I was going absolutely nowhere, I just jumped. Into the Gulf.

The first thing I felt was small. Like, small, small. Tiny. When my head broke the water, I could barely make out the others, bobbing about, and I was right next to the boat, which suddenly seemed gargantuan. I was treading water, buoyed by the salt concentration and my flippers, and was just debating whether or not to completely and totally freak out when I realized I had the mask only halfway on my head. I didn't know what else to do, and it seemed like a good idea to investigate the area immediately around me for giant jelly fish and/or sharks and/or any other manner of potentially life-threatening and/or really scary marine life. So I pulled the mask down, positioned the mouthpiece, and stuck my face in the water. Somehow, with my primary focus of the world now limited to a masked view, I felt safer. I couldn't scan the entire Gulf for danger, but I could survey the narrow viewpoint I now had. This must be what dogs feel when they are calmer while crated.

The first thing I realized was that we were only in about ten to fifteen feet of water, and that it was incredibly clear. And, as I looked down below my feet, I saw it: the reef. Clear mounds of coral I'd only ever seen on TV or dried out in peoples' beach house decor. Coral like giant mushrooms, like brains, colored from mustard yellow to bright white. And the fish...hundreds of tiny little fish. Some plain and silvery, others splashed with neon yellow, the brightest blue. Swimming in weird, perfect synch with one another.

I stuck annoyingly close to my boyfriend, reasoning that as he is larger he could better fend off a shark attack. The others in the tour bobbed about in the gentle rolls of the Gulf, the braver ones diving down for a closer look.

The shark was the first thing that happened. Everyone was gathering and pointing. I broke the surface long enough to shake the water out of my ears and hear "nurse shark." Terrified, I plunged my face back into the water and saw it, an eight foot shark snuggled down in amongst the coral. It looked as though it had hidden its head in a bunch of coral like an ostrich in the sand, and somehow this seemed like a safe shark. A sheepish one perhaps. Used to tourists gawking and pointing.

I might have been more terrified had the thing been moving around, but it just hung out there. Somewhere in my bank of memories from shark week, I associated the word benign with nurse sharks and, indeed, they are fairly dormant and known to be sluggish. When we surfaced, our guide explained that their mouths are on the bottom, and their primary diet consists of bottom-dwelling fish like flounder and skates. I was just beginning to feel almost safe around this eight-foot shark when the guide impishly dove down, reached out a hand, and stroked the back fin of the shark.

WHY, WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING THE SHARK? THIS IS INSTANT DEATH! I felt panicked, I reached out to make sure my boyfriend was there (so he could fight off impending doom), and I watched as the guide expertly recoiled and the shark, looking annoyed (if that's possible) slunk off to find a spot where tourists couldn't molest him. (Her?)

Having survived my first shark encounter, I was starting to feel pretty damn confident. Here I was, swimming around in the Gulf. I even bravely began to attempt some dives, pushing myself against the buoyancy down to examine the droves of fish closer. I could nearly touch them. I was hovering along down there when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to see my boyfriend gesticulating wildly towards a crop of coral a few yards down. I turned my head to see what he was looking at. And then nearly threw up.

An eel, long and shimmying with bright green accents on its fins, shivered out from one piece of coral and into another. It had to have been at least six feet long, and I could see its ugly, horrifying pointed face. Had I not known what it was, I might have almost thought the body of it beautiful, the way it moved through the water, sunlight glinting off of it. But it was an eel. An eel. Delicious unagi, ugly, ugly creature. I can't stand eels. That scene in Princess Bride? No, thank you.

The eel was gone before I had the chance to swim away. It, too, was probably used to being examined and wanted to seek out quieter hunting grounds.

At this point, we surfaced and saw that the clouds that had been building were now further along in development and giving off onerous rumbles of thunder. Another great fear of mine: lightening strikes. So here I was, in the Gulf with sharks and eels, and a thunder storm building over head. Had you thrown in land-dwelling jelly fish, a tornado, and a part where all of my teeth fall out, it would have been a fairly good summation of every recurring nightmare I've ever had in my life.

Back on the boat, back to the shore. Celebratory mojitos and conch fritters. A bike ride back to the resort, and then a nap on the deck. It wasn't until the nap that I began to really process this adventure. Clear kayaking in a mangrove, snorkeling with a shark and an eel in a reef miles from shore.

To say that any part of my vacation was better than another would be difficult, because the entire thing was a dream vacation come true. We did everything we wanted to do, and then some, ate everything, drank everything, read books, napped in the sun, rode bikes, took pictures, and, you know, snorkeled with some potentially dangerous wildlife. But the best part of all of it was the company. To spend five solid days with someone and never tire of their company says a lot.

And I'm pretty sure he would have beaten up a shark for me. You know, if it came down to it.

9.11.10

Untitled, Sept 2001, The New Glitterati.

I didn't want September 11 to go by unnoticed on this blog.

I, along with about a thousand other runners in Baltimore, lined up at the War Memorial Plaza on Saturday morning to participate in the Run to Remember 5k. It was an absolutely beautiful morning, reminiscent of that day.

Not a year passes that I don't find myself in some sort of quiet reflection on September 11, and I don't think one ever will.

We're embroiled in a tense political climate with people clamoring over one another for even five seconds of ludicrous talk time to scream about mosques and spitting on the graves of the dead for attempting to erect anything that even remotely smacks of Muslim-identity anywhere near Ground Zero. It was nice to take a moment of silence, the sun emitting brilliantly against that snappy blue cloudless sky, the slightest of early-morning autumn chill in the air, listening to flags flap and just musing on everything I hate and love so very much about this country. We are, undoubtedly, sublimely fortunate to have opinions on things. Sometimes, though, I think that people take advantage of this.

I ran because it was a way to be active and involved, because it made me feel like a part of something bigger, and because, in some small and probably insignificant way, it made me feel like part of the solution. We can have conflicting opinions, we can fight, we can throw our weight around and we can even come dangerously close to hating one another over political opinions. But, at the end of the day, regardless of affinity or affirmation, we can get together and we can all run a race, elbow-to-elbow, to remember and celebrate and mourn.

If there is any message to be learned, if there is any silver lining, if there can be a tiny drop of wisdom in the midst of the rubble and smoke that still haunts us, then it must be this: we're all in this life together. Whether you like it or not.

Never forget, they say. Who could?

Untitled, Sept 2001, The New Glitterati

Absolute Zero

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson

This happens all the time now.

I'm standing in a house, which I somehow recognize as my own although it looks nothing like any house I've ever lived in. I'm standing in the living room of sorts, and everything is upside down. Furniture tossed and landed sideways, broken, pieces of it everywhere.

Suddenly, the walls begin to bloom. Circles of mold, near the intersection of wall and ceiling, begin to bleed across the wall in dusty, gray-green patterns that look wet to the touch. The mold begins to overtake the house.

And then there's a creaking, moaning sound, and it happens. The water: it's coming. I can hear it, like a freight train, barrelling forth with its terrible velocity. The windows shatter, and it comes pouring in. Great brown waves, bubbling with toxic fury. The water is pouring in, and I am standing in the middle of the room, and I am alone in a house that is filling up with water.

It picks me up, and I reach for anything. My hands touch wall and go straight through, the plaster crumbling between my fingers, the mold oozing out. This house is already in a state of advanced decay. I know that I will not get out and, in my dream, it doesn't seem to matter. Everything in my life is in this house, and everything is destroyed, so what's the point?

I wake up with my hands clenched in fists held so tightly against me that they are asleep. Pins and needles in my forearms and hands and fingers. I've awoken with one of those audible gasps that you hear yourself make and have to wonder, for a moment, if you're still dreaming.

It's come to this: I'm dreaming about Hurricane Katrina.

I've always had the same recurring stress dream: tornadoes. Always the same scenario: black sky, wind whipping, giant tube of anger and electricity bearing down on me. I am always trying to get away. Sometimes I'm in a car, sometimes I'm on foot, but always, always it's going to get me and suck me up and pull the air out of my lungs and kill me. I almost always wake up just as my feet leave the ground. I've had this dream for as long as I can remember.

And now? A moldy, ruined house with water rushing in. Everything is gone. And the worst part- I don't even try to get away.

Because that's the bigger fear, isn't it? The fear of losing everything? The fear of aloneness and loss of family, friends, house, and any little tiny thread of security that binds us to this sometimes terrible and inexplicable world. And there are moments when we see how painfully thin those ties are, like spiderwebs slick with dew. We accumulate more possessions and ideas and experiences in the hope that these things will weigh us down, give us heavier footing. But there are moments when the water rushes in, and we see how dangerously close we can come to losing everything.

But everything isn't lost, it never is, there are always more webs reaching out and as our hands flail around in this world there is always something to grab onto, even just momentarily. And if we let go, just open our hands and let the water come and admit defeat, something will reach out for us. Because life isn't like nightmares. Thankfully.

I am petrified of absolute zero. Like those burn victims who live but whose faces are marred beyond recognition: how do they go on? Loss of sense of self, loss of all ego, loss of any solid footing on this earth. Or people who lose entire communities and family members to natural disasters. How would you even begin to pick through the mourning process? Losing a house, and all that is contained within. The grief would be overwhelming.

Even more than all that, I am afraid of losing the core essence of myself. Mental illness, some neurological misfire...sometimes the damage is invisible; there is no flood, no fire, but everything is gone just the same. A wind snuffing out a candle, poof, nothing but a thread of smoke remains.

But it's like that moment in Mean Girls (Whatever, totally one of my favorite movies.) when Lindsay Lohan's character, Cady, is participating in the Mathletes contest and suddenly gets it. The line is approaching zero, it's getting closer and closer, but "The limit does not exist! The limit does not exist!"

The limit does not exist. If you do not allow it to.

There will always be something. Some thread. Some lifeline, some gossamer strand of hope. Because we're humans, and we look for meaning in fricking everything. You can lose everything, you can scrape your feet on rock bottom and feel the horrible weight of failure and loss bearing down on you like 80 metric tons of debris-infected water, but you will still hope.

"Hope is the thing with feathers," Emily Dickinson wrote. Perched on the soul, singing it's little heart out even if no one is listening.

I'm thinking maybe it's time to take a little break from reading 1 Dead in Attic and working on this presentation that has me reviewing slide after slide of water, mold, and ruin. I have the luxury of taking a step back and disengaging and, if this is working it's way into my dreams and waking me up again and again through the night, then I'm thinking I need a bit of a break.

If I'm lucky, maybe I'll go back to nightmaring about tornadoes. Or the naked dream. That's another classic.