My Amphibious Life

At this distance, one had the impression of a work of art rather than the sensation of water. What was missing was something wildly alive and indefinable, a root or a shoe. A gnarly, twisted root. A worn-out, whimsical, wildcat shoe. An ambience of bullfrogs. A climate of hammers and ice. Midnight trysts and flippant flautists. Something to set the water on fire and make it shoot up in force and elan and fall back down in a shivaree of misty splatter. This is hard to do in oil. It must be rendered quickly, but slowly, subtly, but fiercely, gingerly, but savagely. It must hold contradictions. It must impel metaphors. Bounce on bedsprings. Certain perceptual amenities subtly embedded in the paint can help the eyes find some perspective among the amorphous hues of a tentative but humid fulfillment, like the spray of a fountain getting your sleeves wet, or an argument in the hallway between a man and a gargoyle disputing the Heideggerian notion of Geworfenheit, and what it means to be thrown into this world, to abruptly find oneself alive to an existence whose meaning may be arbitrary, or imaginary, and the gargoyle seems to be winning.

What is wet? What is that feeling? I like it. I like being wet. In most instances. I don’t much like being wet when I’ve been running a long distance on a cold January day and my sweat gets my clothes wet from underneath, next to my skin, so that if I pause for a minute to wait for a traffic light to change or gaze across the water of Lake Union in the direction of Wallingford where there appears to be a kite wiggling around at Gasworks Park, and the awareness of the wet increases until it feels unmercifully cold and uncomfortable. My favorite wet is the wet of a hot shower, my cold skin getting pelted by drops streaming from a showerhead in a pleasing hiss. And that weird moment at 7:00 a.m. on a November morning in Kauai I got immersed in the Pacific Ocean and it was warm as bathwater. I wanted to stay there. Maybe swim some laps. But I felt a current pulling me under so I scampered out. It’s been a while since I put any trust in the ocean. I worry about sharks. Climate change is making it harder for sharks to find food. I don’t know how they do it, those surfers sitting out on the waves, calm and unbothered, legs dangling.

Or the Vikings. Riding for hours, days, weeks even in a longship, blisters on your hands from all the rowing, the wool and linen and reindeer hide wet from the slop of North Pacific waves, the sound of farts, hairy brutes hanging their butts over the side to take a dump, the stupid jokes, the monotony, the combined smell of brine and fish and sour milk. How is one to be expected to swing an ax at somebody and get splattered with all that blood? The life of a Viking is far less glamorous than it seemed in the beginning. Better to be a trader in spices and silks in Reykjavik. Chopping people up isn’t what it used to be. The thrill is gone. So much nicer to squeeze someone in affection. Not everyone. I don’t want to squeeze Gorm. I want to squeeze Yrsa. The board I’m sitting on is hard. I feel it tugging the oar. My back hurts. And my feet are cold.

I love swimming pools. Though it’s surprisingly easy to get bored in them, once you realize there’s little else to do but swim back and forth, or do a few dives, cannonballs, be a jerk and get everyone wet. I never did that. I was always well-behaved in pools. The most foolish thing I did happened one morning in August, 1965, age 18. I enjoyed diving to the bottom of the pool of my mother’s apartment complex and floating there, hung in suspension, just looking at my shadow on the blue concrete, arms undulating. I could hold my breath for an amazingly long time. It was a weekday, so nobody else around, everyone going to work. When I got out a man in a business suit looked at me, horrified. He was about to jump in after me. He thought I was drowning. I felt embarrassed. How weird that would’ve been had he jumped in & grabbed me. I probably would’ve freaked out. I didn’t know what to say. He was really upset. I thanked him for his concern. There’s no protocol for such things. I can still see him. Dripping. Uncertain how to feel.