Leaves me breathless.
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After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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Watching that made my lungs feel like they were going to explode. I used to free dive off the northern coast of California for abalone. Fort Bragg area was great but the water was quite cold.
In my early teens I used to practice holding my breath while sitting in church.
Silently. That makes it quadroubly difficult.
I would hyperventilate for about a minute then pull in the big one.
I got up to 3 mins.
We had a pool and I found out holding your breath just because is different then when you have to.
Just staying underwater uses up a lot of the oxygen. I’d go under and hook my arm around behind the ladder that way I didn’t have to expend energy staying down. So in the real world I could never stay under more than about 2 mins. The best part was at the very end of the credits when he went in that taco joint and ordered a fish chimichanga. Watch close and if you use VLC you can slow it down and zoom in.
Couldn’t figure out where he was going with it…
In summer of ’74, I lifeguarded at Rock Lake pool, a 2M-gallon public swimming hole repurposed from a defunct limestone quarry. When the grumpy boss left for the evening, we’d pour gasoline onto the expansive waters of the 12′ deep section and touch it off. Swimming under flaming surface water at age 17 on a midsummer night with friends was, I thought, the coolest thing imaginable.
I swim corrected 🙂