Negative Buoyancy


I held my breath, the air painful in my lungs.  Sunlight broke and
changed on the surface of the sea above, and the water around me stroked
my hair as I turned my face toward the depths.  Light dappled my shirt
and the anchor-rope pressed into the skin of my fingers and palms.  

The sea bottom, I told myself, is so far below you that light cannot
even reach it.  You have passed over the beach-shelf and the sea waits
below.  The water is deep and dark and cold below you, and there is a
point in water where a human body will no longer float.

This was true.  The water above you, I continued, has a weight.  Go deep
enough and the sea will no longer bear you up towards light and air and
your friends in the boat; it will enfold you and drag you down.  That
weight is all around you, on every part of your body, pulling you away
from refuge, from safety, into death and the things you fear.  Coldness,
darkness, and feeding things all await you down there.

My hand had grown stiff from clutching at the loop of rope, but I had
come here to face my fear.  After a moment's inner struggle, I released
it and hung, unprotected, above the deep.  This lasted for some seconds,
but then my fear returned and I frantically swam to grasp the anchor-
line, then pulled myself the ten feet to the surface in a surge of
moving water and released air.

Enough, I thought as familiar hands drew me aboard and into the sunlight
once more.  Enough.  Enough of courage and facing fears.  I want to lie
down on the land and feel its dry stability, press my face against the
grass and never see the sea again.  The fact of being in a boat, rocking
with the waves, terrifies me.  I will sleep on my floor tonight, for a
soft bed would remind me too much of the waters that dry now upon my
skin.  I asked my friends to take me home, and they did.

I will return one day and face my fear again, but not soon.  Some things
are harder to face than others.

T E Morgan, 24/4/2000
-- 
Timothy E. Morgan


The Sunburst Project, Week 7
http://www.chaoseed.com/btr/sbp/