AtomicCafe1
12-25-2011, 03:00 AM
The first time we touched water was at Temperance River. My friends and I decided to go hiking. The trail from the side of the highway led us through a forest and to a lull in the river, a sort of stagnant pool—a waterfall cut through some thick bluffs ahead. We could hear it, but we couldn’t see it. A few people swam here, and so I said, “You guys ready to swim?”
This was the first time we touched water.
We were on a camping trip to Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. On the trip we all expected to become something—only we didn’t become something, and so it was a failure. The minute we set off from Chanhassen, Minnesota—some three hours drive from Superior—it started to downpour and the windshield wipers halted, to our utter horror. My friend drove the ’84 Volvo 240 (he got it for 450 bucks that summer) into a ditch later that night. We saw ****ty movies, locked the keys in the truck, and overheard a lunatic at the campsite, yelling that he would kill everybody.
As I waded into the river, an algae-like substance clung to my trunks, the water thick and soupy. A crowd was gathering on the shoreline. Off a cliff facing the river, a muscular black man and his petite white girlfriend were looking down into the water, about to jump. It was apparently deep enough below them. While they were looking down, I dove into the river, the others following close behind, and when we popped out of the water we watched the couple. The girlfriend ran to leap, but then she stuttered and stopped, turning her back and tucking her head into her chest and laughing. The man didn’t jump off, either.
The crowd slowly dispersed, disappointed.
Thinking of that river, thinking of that soupy water, thinking of that couple, I’ve come to the conclusion—that the people we see only once, they impact you in a strange way that you can’t really put your finger on; that we often see the things that aren’t there, and the things that aren’t there are the things we should see. That sometimes, the water is freezing cold, sometimes it’s perfect—and you have to realize that.
The water was perfect. My friends and I splashed each other like kids and the couple walked down from the cliff. I asked the man as they waded by us, Are you going to jump off later? and he said, No. The couple swam upstream, where the river got thinner. The bluffs got higher and sharper, and the waterfall got closer, and the current cut across the body like a fillet knife. We watched them cling to the rocks, which looked like the walls of a sinister maze, and soon enough they disappeared around the corner. The white-splash noise of the falls was deafening.
I looked at my friend.
Let’s do it, he said.
Do what? I asked.
Let’s jump off the cliff, he said.
Are you crazy? I said. Do you even know how to swim?
I took swimming lessons, once, he said, and then he laughed. No, I just mean, let’s swim to that ledge over there, and he pointed across the river.
I haven’t thought about that couple for a long time, but I had a dream of her later on in the trip. We were camping in the city limits of Duluth. A skunk had brushed up against our tent—we’d seen it. In the dream the girlfriend floated by on the river like a sort of angel, and she said something, gently, and like a butterfly the music of her voice floated in and out of my ear. But she passed out of sight—although I could still hear her sugary-voice. And then at this point the current jolted me. It threatened to take me under. I began to thrash and sink, but I clench to the rock, and so I didn’t go under.
My friends and I reached to the ledge across the river, pushing out of the depths. We climbed up and explored the cavernous nooks at the back, and then we sat there like sun-bathing seals. I decided to test myself and journey upstream, alone, partly because I saw how my friends swam, their arms straight instead of bending on the front-crawl, and partly because I wanted to go alone.
I wonder if I were to pass the girlfriend on the street nowadays, would I recognize her? And what would happen if I didn’t recognize her—would that even matter? I only saw her one afternoon, and besides, she didn’t even jump.
Somewhere far ahead of me, the couple wafted. In my life, now, she is always behind me, pushed way back in the accumulation of experiences of my life.
I waded, I bobbed. I clung to the edge of the cliffs—smooth, slimy, hard to grasp. The water pushed against me, and the farther I went, the harder it pushed. I felt the weight of the force, the indifference of the force, the heaviness.
Go farther! my friend said from the ledge. I craned my neck to see him. He motioned his hands to go ahead. I turned back ahead.
I reached for the next grip and pulled myself forward through the water. The water roared, sliding nearly through my torso. Every inch ahead I went, I gained weight, as though weeds from the bottom were wrapping my body, pulling me back, gaining weight. If I were to let go, I’d jet backward. My body even began to float behind me. I reached out my hand into the water, and watched my fingers conform to the current, my hand slowly drifting downstream, away from me, not belonging to me anymore.
I took my hand back.
I climbed up on a small ridge because I start thinking of undercurrents and how a friend’s uncle once told me a story about his buddy dying from one. I sat on the rocks. I listened to the tumbling of the water around the corner. And soon enough, out of nowhere the couple drifted by, the man first, running serenely with the current, the woman following after, guiding herself along the rocks. As she passed by, close enough that I could see the freckle above the right side of her lip, she said to me, gently, Don’t let me drown. And then she smiled, and winked.
The trip was a failure. Anytime I think about the failure, the couple is there, the girlfriend, lurking somewhere just out of reach. It isn’t ever conscious. But it’s automatic. And then I think, it has to amount to something, right? My friends and I went up there ourselves, that much I know. That amounts to something, right? Two days later when we touched Lake Superior, it was freezing cold. But the current didn’t pull me under, did it?
I watch as the couple drifts to the shoreline, and stands up. The man grabs the woman and throws her over his shoulders, and she squeals. They leave soon. She doesn’t drown.
My friends are on the ledge. I am crouched on a ridge upstream. The couple is gone. I am here, in the present, wondering if she really did drown, or wondering if it was I who drowned. But really, I don’t dream about her at all, I don’t even think about her. She’s lost somewhere in my head, way back there, and every so often I can hear her gentle voice.
Later we hike and find a cliff and we stop and swim. I am the only one to jump off the cliff. I do it three times, and each time I enter the water the pressure kills my ears.
This was the first time we touched water.
We were on a camping trip to Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. On the trip we all expected to become something—only we didn’t become something, and so it was a failure. The minute we set off from Chanhassen, Minnesota—some three hours drive from Superior—it started to downpour and the windshield wipers halted, to our utter horror. My friend drove the ’84 Volvo 240 (he got it for 450 bucks that summer) into a ditch later that night. We saw ****ty movies, locked the keys in the truck, and overheard a lunatic at the campsite, yelling that he would kill everybody.
As I waded into the river, an algae-like substance clung to my trunks, the water thick and soupy. A crowd was gathering on the shoreline. Off a cliff facing the river, a muscular black man and his petite white girlfriend were looking down into the water, about to jump. It was apparently deep enough below them. While they were looking down, I dove into the river, the others following close behind, and when we popped out of the water we watched the couple. The girlfriend ran to leap, but then she stuttered and stopped, turning her back and tucking her head into her chest and laughing. The man didn’t jump off, either.
The crowd slowly dispersed, disappointed.
Thinking of that river, thinking of that soupy water, thinking of that couple, I’ve come to the conclusion—that the people we see only once, they impact you in a strange way that you can’t really put your finger on; that we often see the things that aren’t there, and the things that aren’t there are the things we should see. That sometimes, the water is freezing cold, sometimes it’s perfect—and you have to realize that.
The water was perfect. My friends and I splashed each other like kids and the couple walked down from the cliff. I asked the man as they waded by us, Are you going to jump off later? and he said, No. The couple swam upstream, where the river got thinner. The bluffs got higher and sharper, and the waterfall got closer, and the current cut across the body like a fillet knife. We watched them cling to the rocks, which looked like the walls of a sinister maze, and soon enough they disappeared around the corner. The white-splash noise of the falls was deafening.
I looked at my friend.
Let’s do it, he said.
Do what? I asked.
Let’s jump off the cliff, he said.
Are you crazy? I said. Do you even know how to swim?
I took swimming lessons, once, he said, and then he laughed. No, I just mean, let’s swim to that ledge over there, and he pointed across the river.
I haven’t thought about that couple for a long time, but I had a dream of her later on in the trip. We were camping in the city limits of Duluth. A skunk had brushed up against our tent—we’d seen it. In the dream the girlfriend floated by on the river like a sort of angel, and she said something, gently, and like a butterfly the music of her voice floated in and out of my ear. But she passed out of sight—although I could still hear her sugary-voice. And then at this point the current jolted me. It threatened to take me under. I began to thrash and sink, but I clench to the rock, and so I didn’t go under.
My friends and I reached to the ledge across the river, pushing out of the depths. We climbed up and explored the cavernous nooks at the back, and then we sat there like sun-bathing seals. I decided to test myself and journey upstream, alone, partly because I saw how my friends swam, their arms straight instead of bending on the front-crawl, and partly because I wanted to go alone.
I wonder if I were to pass the girlfriend on the street nowadays, would I recognize her? And what would happen if I didn’t recognize her—would that even matter? I only saw her one afternoon, and besides, she didn’t even jump.
Somewhere far ahead of me, the couple wafted. In my life, now, she is always behind me, pushed way back in the accumulation of experiences of my life.
I waded, I bobbed. I clung to the edge of the cliffs—smooth, slimy, hard to grasp. The water pushed against me, and the farther I went, the harder it pushed. I felt the weight of the force, the indifference of the force, the heaviness.
Go farther! my friend said from the ledge. I craned my neck to see him. He motioned his hands to go ahead. I turned back ahead.
I reached for the next grip and pulled myself forward through the water. The water roared, sliding nearly through my torso. Every inch ahead I went, I gained weight, as though weeds from the bottom were wrapping my body, pulling me back, gaining weight. If I were to let go, I’d jet backward. My body even began to float behind me. I reached out my hand into the water, and watched my fingers conform to the current, my hand slowly drifting downstream, away from me, not belonging to me anymore.
I took my hand back.
I climbed up on a small ridge because I start thinking of undercurrents and how a friend’s uncle once told me a story about his buddy dying from one. I sat on the rocks. I listened to the tumbling of the water around the corner. And soon enough, out of nowhere the couple drifted by, the man first, running serenely with the current, the woman following after, guiding herself along the rocks. As she passed by, close enough that I could see the freckle above the right side of her lip, she said to me, gently, Don’t let me drown. And then she smiled, and winked.
The trip was a failure. Anytime I think about the failure, the couple is there, the girlfriend, lurking somewhere just out of reach. It isn’t ever conscious. But it’s automatic. And then I think, it has to amount to something, right? My friends and I went up there ourselves, that much I know. That amounts to something, right? Two days later when we touched Lake Superior, it was freezing cold. But the current didn’t pull me under, did it?
I watch as the couple drifts to the shoreline, and stands up. The man grabs the woman and throws her over his shoulders, and she squeals. They leave soon. She doesn’t drown.
My friends are on the ledge. I am crouched on a ridge upstream. The couple is gone. I am here, in the present, wondering if she really did drown, or wondering if it was I who drowned. But really, I don’t dream about her at all, I don’t even think about her. She’s lost somewhere in my head, way back there, and every so often I can hear her gentle voice.
Later we hike and find a cliff and we stop and swim. I am the only one to jump off the cliff. I do it three times, and each time I enter the water the pressure kills my ears.