January 2, 2014
I’m uncontainable. I can hardly sit still for long. Often I have moments where I feel I might spontaneously combust – implode and explode in the exact same instant – and all that will be left will be some smoke poofing out in mid air. Sometimes I feel like this wherever – at any moment – even in a grocery aisle.
A few years ago on a short trip to South Beach in Miami, at water’s edge I really felt the continent at my back, even if the spit of land that is Florida is actually all that is between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico then the Desert Southwest and the Pacific.
I looked out, southeastward. I’m an ok swimmer. I can get better. In my spontaneous moments I dream I can leave the land and swim to Cuba. Or Africa. Just get in the water those turquoise fading to deeper blue Atlantic waves and leave everything and everybody behind.
Once you leave the land, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just you and the water, and the closeness of your breath inside the waves inside your ears. All that water.
I didn’t have goggles, so whatever or whoever was with me was out of mind. It was just me and the open plain ahead. The lifeguard in the painted stick house on the sand always hates me as I start to pass the buoy line. They blow the whistle but what really can they do? The crowded beach doesn’t notice or care. Soon I don’t hear the whistle, and I never cared.
Without goggles, seriously I have no idea who is beneath, or how deep. I could swim outward forever.
I love my body. I love living inside my body. I love anatomy. Fluidity in motion. Did I tell you I’m a shark?
Why is it when at last I decide to turn around the dream dissipates instantly and you are vulnerable, your back exposed to the whole mouth of the rest of the ocean? The shore seems far away in front. Now my movements got jerky. I had joined the land again and had to get back there. My breathing was a little off, but I’m cool. Then something big and rubbery bumped into my leg and yeah I shot out of that water probably making a big ol UGLY splashing my body accordioning but I regained my cool and swam inward, not feeling this at all now, but arms knifing into the water one after the other.
I need to face my fears. I think I should be able to go anywhere. I have been staying on the surface even when I’m certainly known as a deep muthafucka. I need to swim with my bare exposed body with them.
Did I tell you I’m a shark? I need to learn to swim better and dive with them, like them.
I go anywhere.
The current had pulled me down the shore. I dripped back onto land and went about my biz. Nobody knew.
Happy New Year. It’s January 1, 2014. Today we start our 2 year adventure together: Fear & Loving: Where Sea Level Meets the Deep.
– Dallas, TX (for a few weeks more)
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