A Little Like Dying

I jumped in. I didn't close my eyes.







The point is, I've always been afraid of water, I still am. Try as I might, I just can't glean far back into my past encounters with water which would have traumatized me -- except perhaps that one time in the Adriatic Sea, during one of our annual seaside trips in the heart of the Balkan summer. I was around 10, and for some reason I had waded into the water with my brown plastic sandals on. After a short swim in the deep end, I gratefully scrambled towards the sand seabed but when my feet touched the bottom, instead of relief, I only met with a hideous pulling force that grabbed my foot and seemed to suck me back into the water. I struggled, I panted, I tried to hold my head above the water -- and finally managed to escape whatever it was by wrenching my foot from the sandal, which remained on the sand bottom of the sea as a sacrificial offering that bribed the devouring depths into letting me go... sandalless. I squeaked my way out onto the beach, limping unevenly with one sandal on, shaky in the knees and ready to forget the episode as soon as possible.


But I didn't. And I keep wondering, what is it that makes me go back to the pool, again and again, with joy and anticipation, almost religiously? Like the baby-me who, according to family legend, cried my guts out every time water accidentally trickled down my face during my daily bath in spite of my parents' careful watch, I still fear water -- but insist on going back into it, with puzzling regularity. I have been trying to understand this, and, really, I can come up with only one answer -- the simplest.


It


just


feels


so


good.

Submerging yourself in water is like diving into a new world; a world with its own texture, its own patterns, its own laws of physics. When I turn on my back and exhale, and my body floats away from me, I am just a bundle of consciousness, reduced to its most primitive, most easily satisfied form. Lighter than the dandelion wool, I (or what's left of me? or pure me?) listen for the little noises produced in the insides of the pool: low grunts, muffled squeaks, dampened voices, soggy blurred notes of PA music. This must be how it was in the womb, this, in fact, must be my memory of it, this must be why I have a goofy smile as I gaze at the high ceiling of the YMCA. You turn off all the heavy engines, and with the ease of a trapeze artist, you hang on a thread of an early you, the one filled with cosmos, the one not chiselled with the circumstance, the one floating in prelife, the one that is precariously close to non-existence. If you turn around and propel yourself through the water glittering with light crystals cutting diagonally through the belly of the pool, you can actually sense them: the non-living, the bodiless, the free, already gone or about to make an entrance. And you're one of them, and it's like being with long-lost friends.

When you're in the water, take your time. Breathe out slowly, sending the constellation of bubbles upwards, watch your arms move, making the shadow on the blue bottom of the pool, let the ripple against your sides remind you you're pushing through thick walls of a green world, for no reason, for nothing. Because you've found the portal between here and there.




(Really, it's the inverse of what Benjamin feels in The Graduate when his parents get him huge diving gear for his birthday: trapped in the clumsy contraption and exposed to the view of all the guests gathered around the pool, all he can hear is the sound of his own breathing, separated from himself and from the others by the narrow visor of the mask)



... And then tonight I got on the metro at Atwater, and the first person I saw sitting in the corner was Gerome, tanned and even taller on the ground, whom I met in the water (once we shared a lane), and who had been away in El Salvador (mostly surfing and being a gringo) for 6 months and when he got off at the next station, I had a huge smile on my face even though I probably won't see him again since he's going away soon and not coming back...



So many worlds you can discover by entering the water...

Les Empreintes

LES EMPREINTES †

La porte qu’on trouve ouverte
Par quelqu’un,
La route qu’on suit après
Les autres

Le fruit qui montre des dents
Inconnues,
Le paysage qu’on voit quand
On est seul

La voix qui résonne après
Une chanson,
L’image qu’on sent lorsqu’on
Ferme les yeux

L’hôpital où on se promène
Avec les morts,
La présence qui est née
D’une absence.

† Merci à Jacques Prévert

Attaché(e)

Je veux voir si le ciel s’ouvrira et m’avalera…. Parce que j’écris en français!

ATTACHÉ(E)

Quand j’habitais à Halifax, en Nouvelle-Écosse, il y avait un vieux monsieur qui vivait près de chez moi. En été, chaque fois que je passais devant sa maison, il était assis dans la véranda, protégé par des vitres. Il semblait vieux comme Hérode : ses cheveux blonds comme les blés, son corps maigre comme un haricot, et son regard profond comme la haute mer, témoignaient des années et des expériences qu’il avait vécues. La chose la plus bizarre chez ce monsieur était un long tuyau, qui était attaché à son nez et dont l’autre bout disparaissait quelque part au-dessous de sa chaise. Je ne me rappelle plus comment cela a commencé, mais chaque fois qu’il me voyait dans la rue, il sautait de son siège en criant, « Hé! » pour attirer mon attention, et il se mettait à me saluer de la main, avec un sourire épanoui sur son visage. Toujours un peu surprise par ce geste, je ralentissais le pas, en lui retournant sa salutation et son sourire. La vie s’arrêtait pour un instant, pour quelques secondes il n’y avait que nous deux, en train de nous saluer, de nous souhaiter une bonne journée, de communiquer sans mots.

Il y a deux ans que j’ai déménagé d’Halifax, sans jamais connaître le nom de mon voisin. Au moment où j’écris ce portrait, je suis assise dans un laboratoire, essayant d’apprendre le français et de m’assimiler dans ma nouvelle vie. Néanmoins, je me souviens de ce vieux monsieur, attaché à sa bouteille d’oxygène; je lui offre une salutation muette, et j’espère qu’il va bien.

8. Juni