A couple of weeks ago, I told my Otter that I wanted to get off the island, off the Keys. Gettin kinda feverish with my lust for space, for breathing room.
So today, I got up, had Cafe Sua Da and a fresh-made bagel, and then, under the aegis of the literally-minded Otter, tossed myself out of an airplane, two miles up in the air, with some guy I'd just met strapped to my back.
...As you can see, I was terribly indifferent to the whole endeavour...
Honestly, it was one of the sweetest, most exquisitely beautiful things I've ever experienced. I totally expected a titanic adrenaline rush, expected to be giddy, shaking and stuttering when I hit the ground, but instead I was happy, calm, fulfilled. Grateful, more for the experience than for my continued life. There's nothing like participating in something 'common sense' dictates is a Really Bad Idea to make your blood flow a little more smoothly, to remind you to breathe.
...It's so...
Y'know, it's so calming. It really soothes me to put my body and my sanity in Harm's way; it soothes me to teeter at the edge of an airplane door, over 10,000 feet up, and know that today is not my day to die...and if I'm wrong, if it is, so be it.
It's a beautiful day for an Exit.
I'm still not really sure how to function in the Day-to-Day, in the mundane; but if you wanna throw me out of an airplane, drive 85 mph down West Virginia mountain roads at dusk, or dunk me in the Atlantic with a spear gun I don't know how to use, wearing a 20-year-old pair of fins...well, then! Baby, it's on!
I did go spearfishing a few days ago. I managed to get all the job-baking done in about 4 hours, then ran home to meet Otter and team up with a hardcore, shark-hunter friend of ours for an afternoon's shenanigans in the big Blue. I was more anxious learning how to use a spear gun in the high-rollin ocean water, with an inebriated Otter and a Captain on a killing spree, than I was falling out of that Cessna today. Fer damn sure. I was prepared to hit the ground and die instantly if anything went wrong in the air; I was not prepared to suffer, or watch anyone else suffer, the injuries I imagined a misfired spear gun could inflict on human flesh.
Unfortunately for my documentary madness, I forgot both an underwater camera and my super-cool, super-retro, early 60s turquoise-colored bathing cap with white plastic flowers. Pity. 'Cause with my beautiful bathing cap and a spear gun? I'd look like the love-child of Aquaman and Esther Williams. I'd look like the love-child who, early on, fell in with a gang of surly chefs and rebellious literati, who chain smokes and has a fondness for both saporous sinsemilla and herbaceous elixirs from South of the border.
Photos for my imaginary posterity.
Funny...
I thought that after plummeting through the troposphere, I'd be spilling over with verbiage, with my effulgent circumlocution, what Otter calls my "high-wire vernacular." Ain't the case, apparently. I can feel the spill coming, can feel myself full and needing an overflow, but I keep stopping short, keep getting distracted. I'm a goddamned butterfly today instead of a Luna moth; I am driven by distraction instead of burning passion. My heart is too calm.
...Huh.
And here I thought peace was something I needed more of.
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