Weekly Writing – May 27 2023

I had never really believed there was such a thing as diving too deep. There was equipment, and there were people, not suited to do it, but the former was a challenge to overcome, and I wasn’t one of the latter. With the right materials, the right tricks, and patience, there was always a way to go just a little deeper.
It was a hunger. It was a cheap numerical satisfaction, too, counting fathoms below the midnight zone the way a kid would measure themselves against a ruler on a door frame, but mostly, it was the need to see what lay just that little ways beyond where I’d been forced to stop last time. As long as there was more black beneath me, there was more to explore.
A hunger and a clear numerical purpose. So I know I should have been worried, suspicious, at least, when I didn’t find the bottom where all the instruments had said it should finally be. But looking down at that blackness where all the measures and metres had told me there should be nothing more to explore…
I can’t describe the joy of it to you. Not in a way that would explain why I was stupid enough to keep swimming down. But it felt like, for the first time, I’d found a completely unexplored horizon.
It felt like a call. I was afraid that, if I went back to check the instruments, or even if I looked away, it wouldn’t be there anymore. I swam down as if that cold black silence, dense as lead, was something that could escape me. Maybe…
Maybe I was never suited to it after all. Maybe someone who was would have had the sense to turn back. When it stopped being so silent, or when they saw the lights. Maybe being suited isn’t the same as being called.
You aren’t so different, are you? You have to know there’s nothing good I can tell you about what I saw down there. Whatever the reason is that I haven’t dived since, it’s still down there, practically under our feet, and once you know that, you can’t forget it. You look at the rain and think, this is water it might have breathed. Every river might flow from it. Every drink is shared with it.
But you’re still listening. And I don’t know if you’re suited or called, but I understand. So, fine. Close the window – it looks like it might start raining any minute – and sit back down, and I’ll tell you.