I will remember this moment for the rest of my life. It will follow me, haunt me, find me in my sleep, and catch me in my day dreams. When I least expect it, I know that the smooth feel of cold sand running through my fingers, the roughness of rope, the slanting distant shine of sunlight through faded windows, will bring it all back to me. It will suck me under, down into it’s cool depths, where the oceans currents pull and tug and silently whisper strange songs. The cool depths will whisper, silently ask, why didn’t you stay down here with me? Come back, come back down, breathe my calming coolness; come back under, where Time has no meaning.
I left something down there, of that I am sure; I gave away a small part of myself to the ocean, and that something will always call me back.
****
My flippers cut sharply into my feet with every kick; I don’t feel the cutting, only the soft pull of the ocean. The rough rope, which is tied to the buoy bobbing on the surface, with its anchor resting on the sandy floor below, fills my vision. I am only vaguely aware of it, I am supposed to be counting the fluorescent knots of tape that mark off the metres as I descend. I am supposed to only dive to 30m, but I have passed that point long ago. I distantly remember the 40m tape marker flashing pass, but can’t remember any others.
I kick, slow and powerful, my flippers painting broad strokes through the water. Like the falling tide, I let the tension ebb from my oxygen sucking muscles, becoming like the dancing green seaweed clinging to the reef.
I kick down until I find the point where I don’t need to kick anymore, where my negative buoyancy is enough to suck me down, down, down into the dark, cool, blue.
I am lost in it, lost sight of the surface, of the distant warm sun, of the kicking flippers of my training partners waiting on the surface, of my thoughts and reason; I am lost in the moment, the beautiful moment, which washes over me in cool tugging currents and pulls me deeper into her depths. There is no need for anything else but to loose myself under her magic, wander through her enthralling mazes of silence, a silence which presses against my ears. I drift down long passages of frozen time, willingly fall under her spell, and for a few brief minutes, time and space and everything doesn't matter.
Suddenly, I find myself on the golden ocean floor. I grab hold, digging my fingers under, shoveling a loose pile of sand onto the palm of my hand. The golden grains trickle through my fingers in the same way I fell from the breathing-air. For a moment, I am reminded of an hour glass, with the trickling sand counting my escaping minutes. But the oceans currents catch the falling sand, tugging and pulling, the grains bob and weave, dancing across the golden ocean floor to a silent tune. Time has no meaning beneath these cool depths.
I lie on my back on the golden ocean floor. I blow a mouthful of air as if I was blowing a kiss; I feel the trapped air escape my lips and form translucent balloons. I watch the bubbles bob and weave, sometimes bursting into showers of smaller bubbles; they race out of sight, onwards and up, up, up to the breathing-air.
I am supposed to be somewhere, I think to myself, somewhere important. With a sharp jolt, a breaking of the calm spell, I remember; bubbles, the oxygen, the breathing-air of the surface, the searing hot burning in my lungs, the jerking contractions of my diaphragm which try and make me suck the non-breathing-coolness of the ocean.
But I also think of other things, an image of golden money, falling through the ocean like sand from my palm. Thoughts of looming responsibility, offices and work and long hours in front of a computer screen press on me like the entire weight of ocean above. I imagine myself running to catch trains, whose doors always slam shut just as I reach them. I charge up and down long escalators, along sterile train station corridors. My tie chokes me and my lungs burn but I can never seem to gasp enough refrigerated air.
I think to myself, why hurry? The breathing-air world is not going anywhere, now is it? But I see the rope, dangling from the breathing-air surface with its anchor resting on the sand at my feet and I know I have to leave.
I take the rough rope and pull it, hard. I kick towards the slanting distant shine of sunlight. I see distant moving shadows; the buoy, with the hanging flippers of my training partners clinging to it and the ebbing and falling opaque glass of the distant surface. I see the sun, above the shadows, with its glancing broken rays of warmth reaching through the ocean to meet me. But the ocean is heavy and my legs burn and I know I cannot make it.
I always thought you were supposed to stay away from the light, I remember thinking as I watched the surface and the sun not getting any closer and then my legs go numb with tiredness and my lungs burn and my head swims and sinks into blackness.
****
My boss snaps the curtains closed on the window shutting out the under-water sun and the cool quite of the ocean. I can’t see my computer screen with that sun coming in, he says to me. Neither could I, not that it bothered me. I had been watching the cricket game in the park outside my window. The boys were using a plank of wood, scavenged from a construction site, as a bat and stacked old paint cans as a stump. The whoomp-crack of the swung bat and whacked ball and the cheers and yelling of the kids in the lazy afternoon sun sent me sinking back under the ocean. The near opaque glass of the window, even through its rusted metals bars, reminded me too much of the ebbing, falling surface.
The day ends in afternoon-curtain-closed shadows which deaden the humming office; I work, and the long hours in front of my computer screen pass slowly. I run to catch the train, whose doors slam shut just as I reach them. I charge up and down long escalators, along sterile train station corridors.
On the train we swing and dangle like monkeys on a branch. We flop and slap into each other with every small lurch and swing of the train. I get a mouthful of garlicly-unidentified spices and onion and chocking deodorant spray as my neighbour sways up against me when the train slides to a stop at another identical station.
Eyes stare fixed ahead, out into the flying darkness of the underground tunnel or locked onto the luminous screens of phones, arched back and hunched, crowed together, breathing onto each other, grinding and rubbing together; but each very much alone.
They are all united in the sameness of checker shirts tightly tucked into black pants, oiled hair, fluffy mustachios. They point their blank stares at me- the dope in a bright red t-shirt and shorts with floppy sandals and a back-pack, who hangs beside them, smells like garlic and ginger and other spices, who towers above them and feels distinctly uncomfortable in his differences.
I don’t meet their looks. I stare blankly out into rushing darkness flying past the window. I count the train stops as they slowly pass, watch the time tick by. I count the days I have been in New Delhi. I count how many times I have caught that train. I wonder how many more train stops I will pass in my life.
The train swings out from the tunnel and I watch the darkness disappear into pouring sunshine. I remember somebody shouting into my ear; breath, breathe, breathe man, while he held my head above the water and the sun swam back to me through a tunnel and the breathing-air filled my burning lungs. I remember coughing up ocean and blood and snot and spiting and adrenalin and my swimming head.
I remember the trickle of sand running through my fingers like an hour glass and the way it drifted and danced across the ocean floor.
Jed Anderson-Habel
How Soon Hath Time
by John Milton
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.
About free-diving
http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/free-diving-turns-fatal-20140117
AND
http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/learning-to-freedive-the-worlds-most-dangerous-sport-20140711